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THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

OP 

WASHINGTON 

AND 

OTHER  SKETCHES  OF  SIGNIFI- 
CANT COLONIAL   PERSONAGES 


THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

OF 

WASHINGTON 

AND    OTHER    SKETCHES    OF    SIG- 
NIFICANT COLONIAL  PERSONAGES 

BY 
GEORGE  HODGES 


NEW  YORK 
MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

1909 


Copyright,  1909,  by 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


All  Eights  Reserved 
Published,  February,  1909 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE  APPRENTICESHIP  OF  WASHINGTON    .      7 
II.    THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  ....    41 

III.  THE    ADVENTURES    OF    CAPTAIN    MYLES 

STANDISH 91 

IV.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  JOHN  HARVARD  .    .  149 
V.    THE  FOREFATHERS  OF  JAMESTOWN  .    .    .187 


THE  APPRENTICESHIP  OF 
WASHINGTON 


THE  APPRENTICESHIP  OF 
WASHINGTON 

THE  Continental  Congress  which  sat 
in  Philadelphia  in  the  late  spring  and 
early  summer  of  1775  had  among  its  able 
members  one  who  was  distinguished  from 
the  others  by  the  infrequency  of  his 
speeches  and  by  the  color  of  his  coat.  He 
sat  for  the  most  part  in  attentive  silence, 
well  satisfied  with  the  arguments  of  his 
neighbors,  content  to  forward  the  purposes 
of  the  convention  by  serving  diligently  on 
the  committee  which  was  charged  with  the 
arrangements  for  the  raising  of  an  army. 
But  he  wore  his  uniform.  He  appeared 
not  in  the  attire  of  a  legislator  or  of  a  man 
of  peace,  but  in  the  garments  of  war,  in 
the  colonel's  coat  which  he  had  worn  in 
military  service.  This  dress  was  of  itself 


8  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

a  speech.  Buff  is  defined  in  the  * '  Century 
Dictionary  "  as  "a  yellow  color  deficient 
in  luminosity."  The  buff  of  that  partic- 
ular uniform,  however,  was  by  no  means 
deficient  in  luminosity.  It  shone  with 
meaning,  as  the  blue  sky  shines  in  the 
sun.  Everybody  who  saw  it  knew  that  its 
wearer  was  convinced  that  war  was  in- 
evitable. When  John  Adams  made  his 
notable  speech  in  which  he  put  that  convic- 
tion into  words,  and  declared  that  the  time 
had  come  to  choose  a  commander  over  the 
colonial  forces,  he  pointed  to  the  man  in 
buff  and  blue.  There,  he  said,  is  the  gen- 
eral for  us. 

At  that  moment  a  career  began  with 
which  we  are  all  measurably  familiar. 
Washington  the  general,  we  know;  Wash- 
ington the  president,  we  know ;  with  Wash- 
ington the  colonel,  however,  we  are  not 
so  well  acquainted.  I  propose,  accord- 
ingly, to  recount  some  of  the  exploits  of 
Colonel  Washington.  This  I  do  partly  be- 
cause this  period  of  his  life  is  not  so  well 


OF  WASHINGTON  9 

established  in  the  memory  of  most  of  us; 
and  partly  because  of  the  interest  and 
value  which  naturally  inhere  in  the  begin- 
nings of  things,  and  specially  in  the  begin- 
nings of  noble  lives.  For  biography  ap- 
peals to  our  ambition.  We  read  the  life  of 
a  great  man  not  only  for  the  pleasure 
which  we  get  from  his  society  but  for  the 
sake  of  learning,  if  possible,  how  to  be- 
come great.  What  was  there  in  him  and 
about  him  which  thus  exalted  him  above 
his  fellows?  How  did  he  go  to  work  to 
attain  the  high  purposes  of  his  life? 
Through  what  sort  of  training  did  he  pass 
into  his  might  and  his  fame?  While  we 
are  still  at  such  an  age  that  the  major 
part  of  our  life  seems  to  be  before  us  rather 
than  behind  us,  we  secretly  hope  that  we 
may  somehow  share  in  the  spirit  of  the 
great.  We  may  not  venture  to  solicit  the 
mantle  of  Elijah,  but  we  think  it  quite 
within  the  possibilities  that  at  least  the 
shadow  of  Peter  passing  by  may  helpfully 
overshadow  us. 


10  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

My  subject,  accordingly,  is  the  "  Ap- 
prenticeship of  Washington, "  and  my  pur- 
pose is  to  consider  some  of  the  experiences 
which  served  to  fit  him  to  respond  to  the 
call  of  the  Continental  Congress,  to  lead 
our  armies,  and  finally  to  establish  us  as  a 
people  upon  enduring  foundations. 

It  is  plain  that  young  Washington  lived 
a  large  part  of  his  life  under  the  open  sky. 
He  was  born  and  brought  up  in  the  coun- 
try. There  is  nothing  impossible  in  the 
tradition  of  the  cherry  tree  or  in  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  breaking  of  the  colt.  The  im- 
probable element  in  these  stories  is  the 
extraordinary  conversation  which  accom- 
panies them.  The  talk  which  goes  on  be- 
tween the  lad  and  the  father  is  as  far  re- 
moved from  reality  as  the  conferences  be- 
tween Adam  and  Eve  which  are  reported 
by  John  Milton.  Adam,  as  M.  Taine  ob- 
serves, is  a  graduate  of  the  University  of 
Oxford,  and  has  a  seat  in  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment. And  Mr.  Lodge  makes  a  similar  re- 
mark concerning  the  Washington  of  Par- 


OF  WASHINGTON  n 

son  Weems's  stories.  This  young  person, 
he  says,  is  a  near  relative  of  Sanford  and 
Merton  and  of  Harry  and  Lucy.  He  is  one 
of  Miss  Maria  Edgeworth's  and  Miss 
Hannah  More's  good  boys.  The  truth  is 
that  Parson  Weems,  knowing  nothing 
about  Washington's  boyhood,  but  knowing 
well  that  the  purchasers  of  his  book  would 
wish  to  be  informed  regarding  that  period 
of  his  career,  told  these  pleasant  tales  to 
show  that  the  great  man  began  to  exhibit 
remarkable  qualities  at  a  tender  age.  Un- 
fortunately, at  the  moment  of  writing,  the 
ideal  of  a  perfect  child  was  that  which  was 
set  forth  by  the  maiden  ladies  to  whom  I 
have  referred.  The  proper  child  of  that 
day  was  a  good  deal  of  a  prig.  Washing- 
ton, so  far  as  the  historians  can  discover, 
had  nothing  of  the  prig  about  him.  I  do 
not  applaud  him  for  lying  or  for  swearing; 
but  there  is  a  certain  wholesome  satisfac- 
tion to  be  derived  from  the  fact  that  he  did 
occasionally  tell  a  lie,  when  it  seemed  to 
serve  his  purpose;  especially  in  his  early 


12  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

years,  when  he  dealt  with  Indians.  I  sup- 
pose it  was  considered  necessary  to  lie  to 
Indians.  He  also  was  able,  when  the  situa- 
tion appeared  to  demand  unusual  empha- 
sis, to  use  quite  vigorous  language.  He 
was  a  very  human  person,  with  a  hot  and 
hasty  temper. 

It  is  to  be  noticed,  however,  even  in  these 
apocryphal  stories,  that  the  scene  is  laid 
out  of  doors,  and  that  the  prig,  their  hero, 
has  either  a  hatchet  or  a  halter  in  his  hand; 
never  a  book.  It  does  not  anywhere  ap- 
pear that  the  young  Washington  took  kind- 
ly to  books,  or  that  he  was  ever  at  any 
period  of  his  life  given  to  reading.  It  is 
true  that  in  1748  he  noted  in  his  diary  that 
he  "  read  to  the  reign  of  King  John  "  and 
"  in  the  Spectator  read  to  143,'*  but  these 
are  isolated  items.  It  is  doubtful  if  he 
ever  got  in  the  Spectator  to  144,  or  in  the 
history  to  the  reign  of  the  third  Henry. 
He  was  certainly  well  acquainted  with  the 
reign  of  the  third  George,  which  is  more 
to  the  purpose.  No,  the  items  which  he 


OF  WASHINGTON  13 

records  with  far  more  frequency  and  with 
much  more  interest  are  such  as  these: 
"  Went  a  hunting  with  Jack  Custis  and 
catched  a  fox  after  three  hours'  chase; 
found  it  in  the  creek."  "  February  12th, 
catched  two  foxes."  "  February  13th, 
catched  two  more  foxes." 

Books  entered  of  necessity  into  the  day's 
work  of  the  boy.  Hobby,  the  sexton  of  the 
parish  church,  taught  him  his  letters,  and 
guided  the  first  uncertain  motions  of  the 
handwriting  which  was  afterwards  so 
strong  and  dignified.  Williams,  the  school- 
master of  Bridge's  Creek,  gave  the  re- 
mainder of  his  formal  education.  That 
was  all  that  the  schools  did  for  him.  The 
most  that  he  got,  beyond  the  essential  rudi- 
ments, was  some  sort  of  idea  of  the  world 
in  which  he  lived,  and  a  good  knowledge  of 
applied  mathematics.  The  fact  that  he 
spelled  well  shows  that  he  attended  to  his 
lessons.  His  mother  was  a  particularly 
bad  speller,  even  in  a  day  when  private 
judgment  and  academic  authority  were 


14  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

still  contending  at  the  point  of  everybody's 
pen. 

Whatever  culture  he  had  in  his  early 
years  came  from  the  high-minded  and 
courteous  society  of  the  neighborhood. 
Thackeray  said  that  colonial  Virginia  was 
the  most  aristocratic  country  in  the  world. 
The  remark  was  made  in  a  novel  but  it  had 
a  good  foundation  in  fact.  The  land  was 
sparsely  settled,  being  for  the  most  part 
divided  into  great  estates.  Each  of  these 
estates  had  its  manor  house,  with  many 
large  rooms,  built  for  generous  hospitality, 
flanked  by  the  slaves'  quarters,  and  stand- 
ing in  the  midst  of  gardens  and  fertile 
fields.  One  still  catches  a  glimpse  of  such 
noble  mansions  in  a  journey  down  the 
James  Eiver.  Washington's  own  house  at 
Mount  Vernon  is  the  most  familiar  exam- 
ple. These  places  were  inhabited  by  men 
and  women  of  excellent  English  stock,  who 
maintained  the  pleasant  and  honest  Eng- 
lish traditions.  They  managed  their  house- 
holds and  their  herds,  entertained  continu- 


OF  WASHINGTON  15 

ally,  were  forever  riding  back  and  forth  on 
horses  along  the  wood  roads  making  visits, 
going  to  dancing  parties,  and  to  church  on 
Sundays.  The  young  men  were  fond  of 
hunting  and  competed  one  with  another  in 
rough  sports.  They  were  also  fond  of  the 
young  women,  following  the  good  fashion 
of  the  race.  It  is  recorded  of  Washington 
that  although  he  was  for  the  most  part  a 
pretty  steady  boy,  he  once  * '  surprised  his 
schoolmates  by  romping  with  one  of  the 
largest  girls."  Indeed,  it  is  remembered 
of  him  that  he  had  a  habit  of  falling  in  love, 
and  he  is  known  to  have  entertained  tender 
thoughts  of  several  large  girls  before  he 
met  the  widow  Custis.  This  too  contrib- 
uted much  to  his  education. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  distinctive 
feature  of  all  this  life,  as  I  said  at  the  be- 
ginning, was  that  it  was  lived  under  the 
open  sky.  The  society  of  the  neighborhood 
was  indeed  aristocratic,  but  it  was  an  aris- 
tocracy mitigated  by  manual  labor.  Most 
of  the  great  people  were  land  poor.  All  of 


16  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

them  worked  with  their  hands,  the  women 
in  the  kitchen  and  the  men  in  the  barn.  A 
lad  who  grew  to  manhood  under  these  con- 
ditions knew  how  to  do  things.  He  was  a 
competent  person,  who  could  ride  a  horse, 
and  milk  a  cow,  and  break  a  colt,  and  mend 
a  roof,  and  make  a  bridge.  Washington 
lived  out  of  doors  all  his  life.  He  was  on 
horseback  nearly  every  day.  The  eques- 
trian statues  represent  him  characteris- 
tically. He  was  engaged  in  overseeing 
things,  first  his  estates,  then  his  soldiers, 
then  the  nation.  He  had  the  clearness  of 
sight  which  comes  from  dealing  in  a  large 
way  with  nature.  His  nerves  were  sea- 
soned in  the  sun.  He  had  an  executive 
habit. 

The  lad's  first  ambition  was  to  go  to  sea. 
He  knew  nothing  about  the  sea,  and  it  had 
therefore  a  strong  attraction  for  him.  He 
wanted  to  get  on  board  a  tobacco  ship,  and 
go  out  in  search  of  his  fortune.  Happily, 
his  young  energies  were  set  to  work  in  the 
business  of  surveying.  This  direction  he 


OF  WASHINGTON  17 

owed  in  great  part  to  a  valuable  friend 
and  kinsman,  Thomas,  Lord  Fairfax.  Lord 
Fairfax  was  then  sixty  years  of  age,  an 
Oxford  scholar  and  man  of  the  world,  who 
had  turned  his  back  upon  a  society  which 
had  disappointed  him,  and  had  come  over 
here  to  look  after  his  great  possessions.  It 
was  probably  Fairfax  who  had  set  young 
Washington  to  reading  the  Spectator,  to 
which  he  himself  is  said  to  have  contrib- 
uted a  number.  The  old  man  took  the  boy 
into  his  heart.  They  used  to  ride  and  hunt 
and  talk  together.  Now  he  suggested  that 
he  should  go  out  into  the  forest,  and  sur- 
vey the  Fairfax  lands,  beyond  the  Blue 
Eidge. 

Washington  was  by  this  time  of  the  age 
of  sixteen  years.  I  copy  Mr.  Lodge's  ac- 
count of  his  appearance.  "  He  was  tall 
and  muscular,  approaching  the  stature  of 
more  than  six  feet  which  he  afterwards  at- 
tained. He  was  not  yet  filled  out  to  manly 
proportions,  but  was  rather  spare,  after 
the  fashion  of  youth.  He  had  a  well- 


18  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

shaped,  active  figure,  symmetrical,  except 
for  the  unusual  length  of  his  arms,  indicat- 
ing uncommon  strength.  His  light  brown 
hair  was  drawn  back  from  his  broad  fore- 
head, and  grayish-blue  eyes  looked  hap- 
pily, and  perhaps  soberly,  on  the  pleasant 
Virginia  world  about  him.  The  face  was 
open  and  manly,  with  a  square,  massive 
jaw,  and  a  general  expression  of  calmness 
and  strength.  Fair  and  florid,  big  and 
strong,  he  was,  taking  him  for  all  in  all,  as 
fine  a  specimen  of  his  race  as  could  be 
found  in  the  English  colonies." 

Thus  he  set  out  upon  the  first  day's  task 
of  his  young  manhood.  It  was  in  the  month 
of.  March,  and  there  was  much  rain,  swell- 
ing the  streams,  over  which  there  were  no 
bridges.  The  boy  and  his  companion  slept 
in  settlers'  huts,  or  under  the  trees.  Some- 
times they  went  hungry ;  sometimes,  as  the 
surveyor  says  in  his  journal,  they  had  a 
good  dinner,  "  wine  and  rum  punch  in 
plenty,  and  a  good  feather  bed  with  clean 
sheets."  Once  they  met  thirty  Indians 


OF  WASHINGTON  19 

coming  from  war.  "  We  had  some  liquor 
with  us, ' '  he  says,  * '  of  which  we  gave  them 
part.  It  elevated  their  spirits,  put  them  in 
the  humor  of  dancing,  of  whom  we  had  a 
war  dance, ' '  which  he  describes.  The  jour- 
nal shows  that  he  looked  about  him  atten- 
tively. A  man  who  lives  in  the  woods  must 
keep  his  eyes  open.  But  Washington  saw 
other  sights  than  trees  and  animals,  and 
knew  how  to  set  down  what  he  saw  briefly 
and  clearly.  This  appears  more  noticeably 
in  the  journal  which  he  kept  when  he  went 
shortly  after  this  to  the  Barbadoes  with  his 
brother  Lawrence.  He  has  an  eye  for  the 
pursuits  and  pleasures  of  the  people,  for 
the  crops  and  the  condition  of  the.markets, 
for  the  administration  of  the  government. 
One  characteristic  of  his  account  of  his  sur- 
veying is  the  small  importance  which  he 
attaches  to  the  hardships  of  the  journey. 
This  is  the  proper  result  of  the  sturdy 
training  of  a  lad  bred  in  a  new  country, 
1 '  expecting  accidents, ' '  like  Sancho  Panza. 
On  his  visit  to  the  Barbadoes  he  caught  the 


20  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

smallpox,  an  experience  to  which  he  gives 
some  two  lines  of  his  journal. 

Washington  spent  but  a  month  in  this 
particular  survey,  but  he  was  busy  for 
three  years  as  public  surveyor,  surveying 
lines  which  stand  true  to  this  day.  Mean- 
while, this  frontier  life  was  making  him 
ready  for  his  next  notable  undertaking. 
News  kept  coming  from  the  settlements  be- 
yond the  mountains  that  the  French  were 
trespassing  on  English  land.  This,  indeed, 
was  a  part  of  a  concerted  plan.  The  Eng- 
lish had  built  their  colonies  along  the  coast, 
the  French  had  made  theirs  on  the  banks 
of  the  rivers.  It  would  seem  at  first  as  if 
there  was  enough  room  in  the  great  unset- 
tled continent  for  both  these  companies  of 
colonists.  This,  however,  was  a  view  at 
variance  with  the  theories  upon  which  land 
titles  at  that  time  proceeded.  The  English 
theory  was  that  the  possession  of  land 
along  the  sea  entitled  the  owner  to  all  the 
country  which  lay  westward  back  of  his 
farm  to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  French,  on 


OF  WASHINGTON  21 

the  other  hand,  maintained  that  the  discov- 
ery of  a  river  entitled  the  discoverer  to  all 
the  regions  drained  by  that  river  and  by 
its  remotest  tributaries.  Under  this  the- 
ory, the  French  held  the  St.  Lawrence  and 
the  Mississippi,  and  they  claimed  every- 
thing which  lay  between  the  Alleghenies  in 
the  east  and  the  Eockies  in  the  west.  The 
point  where  these  claims,  English  and 
French,  came  first  into  actual  conflict  was 
at  the  headwaters  of  the  Ohio. 

News  came  that  the  French  were  settling 
in  those  parts,  and  were  asserting  their 
rightful  possession  of  them.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  send  out  somebody  to  learn  what 
the  situation  was.  The  Governor  of  Vir- 
ginia chose  Washington.  The  mission  in- 
volved a  journey  of  five  or  six  hundred 
miles  through  wild  woods,  in  peril  of  hos- 
tile Frenchmen  and  possibly  hostile  sav- 
ages for  the  delivery  of  a  message  which 
might  lead  very  speedily  to  a  declaration 
of  war.  Washington  was  now  of  the  age  of 
twenty-one  years.  Out  he  set,  then,  upon 


22  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

this  expedition,  having  with  him  his  old 
fencing-master  to  act  as  interpreter  in  his 
dealings  with  the  French,  and  an  experi- 
enced and  daring  trader,  Christopher  Gist, 
to  be  their  guide.  They  found  the  Indians 
wavering  between  friendship  with  the 
French  and  friendship  with  the  English, 
but  rather  inclined  at  that  moment  to  side 
with  the  English.  The  French,  they  sus- 
pected, were  intending  to  take  away  their 
lands.  Washington  went  to  the  remotest 
limits  of  diplomatic  circumlocution  to  pre- 
vent the  Indians  from  entertaining  a  like 
suspicion  of  the  English,  and  on  the  whole, 
with  some  assistance  from  the  contents  of 
various  persuasive  black  bottles,  he  was 
successful. 

With  the  French  the  same  arrangements 
availed  at  least  to  disclose  the  thoughts  of 
their  hearts.  "  The  wine,  as  they  dosed 
themselves  pretty  plentiful  with  it,  soon 
banished  the  restraint  which  at  first  ap- 
peared in  their  conversation.  .  .  .  They 
told  me  that  it  was  their  absolute  design  to 


OF  WASHINGTON  23 

take  possession  of  the  Ohio. ' '  During  this 
exercise  of  diplomacy  by  intoxication, 
Washington  sat  by,  very  sober  and  very 
attentive.  He  looked  about  him  with  the 
eye  of  a  frontiersman  and  with  the  instinct 
of  a  soldier.  He  noted  the  point  of  land 
where  the  Allegheny  and  the  Monongahela 
meet,  now  the  site  of  Pittsburgh,  and  re- 
marked its  strategic  importance.  While 
the  French  commandant  was  writing  his 
polite  statement  of  the  claims  of  his  nation, 
Washington  was  making  a  sketch  of  the 
fort,  and  learning  how  many  men  and  guns 
were  there. 

It  was  in  December  when  the  ambassa- 
dorial party  came  back  through  the  long 
forests,  and  a  hard  time  they  had  of  it  in 
the  rain  and  snow.  They  found  the  rivers 
full  of  floating  ice,  and  fell  into  the  middle 
of  one  of  them,  spending  the  night  on  an 
island  in  their  frozen  clothes.  But  they 
made  their  way  at  last  to  Williamsburg,  the 
capital  of  Virginia.  Here  Washington  de- 
livered his  message.  Here  he  printed  both 


24  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

the  reply  of  the  French  commander  and 
his  own  journal  of  the  expedition.  This 
document  presently  arrived  in  England, 
where  it  was  much  read  and  commented 
upon. 

It  was  evident  to  discerning  minds  in 
England  as  well  as  in  the  colonies  that  the 
time  was  approaching  when  another  cam- 
paign must  be  undertaken  in  that  long  war 
which  under  various  names  had  been 
fought  since  first  the  barbarians  assailed 
the  walls  of  Eome.  The  Teuton  and  the 
Latin,  even  in  those  early  days,  repre- 
sented radically  different  ideas.  The  Latin 
stood  for  the  centralization  of  power,  the 
Teuton  for  its  distribution.  The  Latin  po- 
litical idea  was  that  one  man  constituted 
the  state:  the  king  was  the  rightful  pos- 
sessor of  all  land  and  the  rightful  master 
of  all  people.  The  Teuton  political  idea 
was  that  in  the  state  every  man  counted 
one :  power  was  delegated  by  the  people  to 
rulers  who  were  their  representatives. 
These  ideas  pervaded  and  determined  all 


OF  WASHINGTON  25 

life.  They  made  the  north  of  Europe  dif- 
ferent from  the  south  of  Europe  not  only 
politically  but  ecclesiastically  and  socially. 
The  Teutonic  principle  is  essentially  demo- 
cratic. It  implies  private  judgment  rather 
than  authority.  It  works  out  naturally  into 
a  republican  form  of  government  and  into 
Protestantism.  It  is  significant  that  the 
Protestant  reformation  succeeded  in  the 
Teutonic  nations  and  failed  in  the  Latin 
nations.  The  wars  which  accompanied  the 
ecclesiastical  revolution  were  but  another 
campaign  in  the  long  race  struggle.  The 
same  is  true,  in  a  way,  of  the  civil  strife 
in  England  which  resulted  in  the  Com- 
monwealth of  Oliver  Cromwell;  the  de- 
bate was  as  to  the  possession  of  power, 
whether  it  belonged  to  the  king  or  to  the 
people. 

The  fight  between  the  French  and  the 
English  for  the  possession  of  this  continent 
was  therefore  a  contest  charged  with  the 
most  serious  and  profound  consequences. 
The  political,  the  religious,  and  the  social 


26  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

life  of  our  people  depended  upon  the  result. 
The  French  and  Indian  war  was  incompa- 
rably the  most  important  contention  which 
has  taken  place  in  the  whole  course  of  our 
history. 

The  war  lasted  about  seventy-five  years, 
beginning  in  1689.  This  is  the  date  which 
Mr.  Fiske  sets  as  the  end  of  the  primitive 
period  and  the  beginning  of  the  mediaeval 
period  of  American  history.  The  mediaeval 
period  ended  and  the  modern  period  began 
exactly  a  century  later,  with  the  adoption 
of  the  Constitution  in  1789.  The  French 
and  Indian  war  fell  into  four  campaigns. 
The  first  campaign  was  called  King  Wil- 
liam's war;  it  was  made  notable  by  the 
valor  and  ability  of  the  French  commander 
Frontenac,  and  the  French  had  the  best  of 
it.  The  second  campaign  was  called  Queen 
Anne's  warj  and  the  French  had  tne  worst 
of  it.  The  third  campaign  was  King 
George's  war,  during  which  the  men  of 
New  England  captured  Louisburg.  The 
fourth  campaign  was  the  Seven  Years' 


OF  WASHINGTON  27 

war;  it  involved  most  of  the  nations  of 
Europe:  England  and  Prussia  fought 
against  France,  Austria,  Russia,  and 
Spain.  At  the  end  of  this  last  campaign, 
the  English  had  taken  from  the  French 
every  acre  of  their  American  possessions. 
The  first  shot  in  this  decisive  war  was  fired 
by  Colonel  Washington. 

The  declaration  of  French  claims  which 
Washington  brought  back  from  the  Ohio 
called  for  an  immediate  answer,  and  the 
Governor  of  Virginia  raised  troops  to 
carry  it.  He  made  Washington  a  colonel. 
He  sent  Captain  Trent  to  fortify  the  stra- 
tegic junction  of  the  rivers  to  whose  impor- 
tance the  young  diplomat  had  called  atten- 
tion. In  April,  1754,  leaving  a  superior 
officer  to  follow  with  the  main  body  of 
troops,  Washington  pushed  forward  with 
two  companies  to  find  presently  that  the 
French  had  fallen  upon  Trent's  fort, 
turned  out  the  garrison  with  hard  words 
rather  than  with  hard  blows,  and  taken 
possession.  Washington  determined  at 


28  THE  APPEENTICESHIP 

once  to  march  his  hundred  and  fifty  men 
against  them.  Thus  they  arrived  at  Great 
Meadows,  where  natural  banks  of  earth 
made  the  beginnings  of  an  entrenchment 
which  they  named  Fort  Necessity.  The 
clearing  away  of  the  bushes  made  it,  as 
Washington  remarked,  * '  a  charming  place 
for  encounter."  Then  word  came  that  a 
company  of  Frenchmen  had  left  the  fort 
at  the  point  now  called  Fort  Duquesne, 
and  were  coming  in  their  direction.  Wash- 
ington, with  his  soldiers  and  some  friendly 
Indians,  marched  to  meet  them,  found  them 
encamped  in  the  early  morning  after  a 
black  night  of  rain,  and  promptly  fired 
upon  them  with  tragic  effect.  That 
was  the  shot  which  set  all  Europe  blaz- 
ing, and  began  a  war  which  lasted  seven 
years. 

Washington,  as  I  have  remarked,  was 
not  given  to  talking  much  about  himself, 
but  upon  this  occasion  he  said  some  things 
which  he  afterwards  repented.  "  I  flatter 
myself, ' '  he  writes  to  his  governor,  * '  [that 


OF  WASHINGTON  29 

I  have]  resolution  enough  to  face  what  any 
man  durst,  as  shall  be  proved  when  it  comes 
to  the  test,  which  I  believe  we  are  on  the 
borders  of. ' '  To  which  he  added,  *  *  I  heard 
the  bullets  whistle  and,  believe  me,  there  is 
something  charming  in  the  sound."  George 
the  Second,  to  whom  this  sentence  was  re- 
peated, said  "  very  sensibly,"  that  the 
young  man  "  would  not  say  so  if  he  had 
been  used  to  hear  many."  But  he  had  not 
at  that  time  been  used  to  hear  many,  and 
he  did  say  so.  He  thought  it  and  said  it. 
That  is,  this  colonel  of  twenty-two  had 
fighting  blood  in  his  veins.  The  old  instinct 
asserted  itself  in  him  which  has  ever,  in  all 
races,  sent  men  out  with  weapons  in  search 
of  their  neighbors.  Strange  as  it  may  seem 
to  us  peaceful  persons,  to  most  of  whom  the 
nearest  approach  to  war  has  been  in  the 
columns  of  the  newspapers,  some  of  whom 
cannot  even  fire  a  gun  at  a  tree  without 
shutting  their  eyes,  this  young  man  loved 
to  fight.  He  delighted  in  the  peril  of  his 
life.  At  this  time  he  had  no  prudence,  and 


30  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

made  no  calculation  of  the  difference  in 
numbers  between  himself  and  the  enemy. 
The  thing  seems  not  to  have  entered  into 
his  mind.  He  was  eager  to  get  into  action 
and  kill  somebody. 

News  of  this  encounter  came  to  Fort 
Duquesne,  and  Fort  Necessity  was  pres- 
ently besieged  by  a  force  greatly  superior. 
Washington  was  for  fighting  them  in  the 
open,  in  the  convenient  clearing,  but  they 
preferred  the  local  custom  and  fired  from 
the  shelter  of  the  trees.  And  it  rained  very 
hard,  till  in  the  fort  the  men  were  ankle- 
deep  in  mud.  Finally,  Washington  had  to 
surrender,  and  marched  back  along  the 
trail  through  the  woods  defeated.  He  left 
his  hostages,  one  of  them  his  old  fencing- 
master,  and  the  other  a  Scotchman  named 
Stobo,  who  was  taken  to  Quebec,  and,  one 
day,  making  his  escape,  showed  General 
Wolfe  a  path  which  led  up  to  the  Plains  of 
Abraham. 

During  this  expedition  Washington  had 
complained  bitterly  about  his  pay.  He 


OF  WASHINGTON  31 

would  prefer,  lie  said,  the  glory  of  serving 
for  nothing  rather  than  the  ignominy  of 
serving  for  next  to  nothing.  He  did  not 
complain  of  danger  or  of  hardship,  but 
seriously  objected  to  whatever  seemed  to 
him  to  be  unjust.  Thus  though  he  greatly 
desired  a  part  in  the  impending  war,  he  re- 
fused to  take  a  position  where  as  a  colonial 
officer  he  would  be  outranked  by  any  petty 
captain  who  belonged  to  the  regular  army. 
It  was  one  of  the  common  grievances.  The 
matter  was  got  over  by  an  invitation  from 
General  Braddock  to  join  his  staff. 

Braddock  was  the  new  Commander-in- 
Chief  who  had  come  from  England  to  pun- 
ish the  insolence  of  the  French.  He  was 
a  good  soldier,  who  had  seen  some  service, 
but  he  was  absolutely  ignorant  in  all  mat- 
ters which  pertained  to  the  woods.  His 
acquaintance  with  trees  was  wholly  con- 
fined to  tame  trees.  Braddock  was,  more- 
over, a  very  conservative  person.  He  had 
learned  how  to  fight  under  competent  mas- 
ters, and  had  read  books  upon  the  subject. 


32  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

He  knew  by  heart  all  the  rubrics  and  can- 
ons of  conventional  and  respectable  war. 
He  had  pronounced  convictions  on  the  sub- 
ject of  uniforms,  and  on  the  true  order  of 
a  martial  procession.  He  was  a  military 
ritualist.  This  precise  person  now  issued 
forth  to  fight  Indians.  Washington,  on  the 
natural  ground  of  acquaintance  with  the 
country,  offered  him  advice,  but  he  declined 
it.  He  did  not  propose  at  his  age  to  take 
instruction  from  a  youth  in  buckskin  re- 
garding the  art  of  war.  That  was  the  heart 
of  the  whole  matter. 

So  they  made  their  way  along  the  hard 
roads  and  across  the  rivers,  a  good  little 
army.  They  forded  the  Monongahela  near 
the  present  site  of  the  Carnegie  steel 
works,  purposing  to  march  thence  to  the 
French  fort.  Everybody  knows  what  hap- 
pened. The  French  and  Indians  fought 
from  behind  the  trees.  Braddock  had 
never  in  his  life  fought  from  behind  a  tree. 
He  compelled  his  men  to  fight  in  platoons, 
as  men  were  accustomed  to  fight  in  Europe. 


OF  WASHINGTON  33 

The  result  was  that  seven  hundred  men  and 
sixty-two  out  of  their  eighty-six  officers 
were  killed  or  wounded.  Braddock  himself 
fell,  aware  at  last  of  his  tragic  blunder, 
saying,  too  late,  * '  I  will  do  better  another 
time."  Washington,  who  had  two  horses 
shot  under  him  and  four  bullets  through 
his  coat,  rallied  the  fugitives,  read  the 
prayer-book  service  over  the  dead  general, 
and  conducted  the  retreat. 

Thereafter,  the  war  was  waged  in  other 
places,  ending  at  Quebec.  Washington  had 
little  to  do  with  it.  He  had  learned  his 
lesson.  He  had  observed  that  frontiers- 
men were  able  to  meet  regular  soldiers  and 
overcome  them.  He  had  served  his  ap- 
prenticeship. For  a  dozen  peaceful  years 
he  managed  his  estates,  looked  after  his 
slaves,  administered  local  affairs  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  vestry,  and  colonial  affairs  as  a 
member  of  the  Virginia  assembly.  He  rode 
up  across  the  country  to  New  York,  and 
thence  to  Boston,  where  he  attended  a  ses- 
sion of  the  Great  and  General  Court,  was 


34  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

asked  to  dinner  at  all  the  great  houses,  and 
went  to  a  dancing  party  every  evening.  It 
is  not  likely  that  it  occurred  to  him  that  he 
might  presently  interrupt  these  gay  fes- 
tivities. Everybody  was  glad  to  meet  the 
gallant  and  handsome  young  colonel.  His 
cloak  of  white  and  scarlet  brightened  all 
the  countryside  as  he  rode  along  with  his 
aides  and  his  servants.  It  is  pleasantly 
remembered  of  him  that  he  was  particular 
about  his  dress.  In  his  orders  to  the  haber- 
dashers and  other  tradesfolk  of  London  he 
showed  an  interest  in  being  in  the  mode. 
He  had  a  keen  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things,  which  afterwards  made  him  the 
most  dignified  of  our  Presidents.  No  other 
of  our  chief  magistrates  has  carried  him- 
self so  like  a  king. 

This  did  not  prevent  him  from  falling 
temporarily  in  love  with  Mary  Philipse,  as 
he  passed  through  New  York ;  nor  did  it  in- 
terfere with  his  falling  permanently  in  love 
with  Martha  Custis.  He  met  her  one  day 
at  dinner — which  was  then  a  midday  meal 


OF  WASHINGTON  35 

— spent  the  afternoon  in  her  cheerful  so- 
ciety, and  stayed  to  tea.  The  next  day  in 
the  morning  he  made  his  dinner-call,  and 
before  noon  the  young  colonel  and  the 
young  widow  were  happily  engaged  to  be 
married.  They  do  not  look  it  in  the  sedate 
pictures,  but  that  is  how  it  happened.  At 
the  wedding  ' '  the  bride  was  attired  in  silk 
and  satin,  laces  and  brocade,  with  pearls  on 
her  neck  and  in  her  ears,  while  the  bride- 
groom appeared  in  blue  and  silver  trimmed 
with  scarlet,  and  with  gold  buckles  at  his 
knees  and  on  his  shoes."  So  they  rode 
away  after  the  ceremony,  the  bride  in  a 
coach  and  six,  her  husband  riding  beside 
her,  mounted  on  a  splendid  horse  and  fol- 
lowed by  all  the  gentlemen  of  the  party. 
Here  we  take  leave  of  him,  on  the  porch  of 
Mount  Vernon.  His  next  residence  was 
Craigie  House,  in  Cambridge. 

Looking  back  now,  over  this  period  of 
apprenticeship,  we  perceive  that  Washing- 
ton learned  his  most  notable  lessons  under 
the  tuition  of  defeat.  Defeat  imparts  an 


36  THE  APPRENTICESHIP 

instruction  and  even  an  inspiration  of  its 
own,  and  is  sometimes  more  significant  and 
more  effective  than  victory.  Leonidas  and 
Ms  Spartans  were  defeated  at  Thermopy- 
lae; Warren  was  defeated  at  Bunker  Hill; 
that  tall  shaft  marks  a  battleground  from 
which  our  men  were  driven.  The  news  of 
that  encounter  reached  Washington  on  his 
way  to  Boston.  "  Did  the  militia  fight?  " 
he  said.  And  when  he  learned  that  they 
stood  their  ground  and  fought  well, 
"  Then,"  he  exclaimed,  "  the  liberties  of 
the  country  are  safe."  He  had  learned  by 
his  own  experience  that  there  is  a  differ- 
ence between  defeat  and  defeat. 

Washington  learned  at  Great  Meadows 
that  courage  is  not  enough  for  the  winning 
of  a  battle:  the  soldier  must  be  properly 
equipped.  He  learned  at  Braddock's  Field 
that  even  courage  and  equipment  together 
are  not  enough;  the  soldier  must  under- 
stand the  situation  and  adapt  himself  to  it. 
Strong  in  the  strength  of  these  lessons, 
with  the  advantage  of  a  sound  body,  a  con- 


OF  WASHINGTON  37 

fident  spirit,  and  a  clear  conscience,  he  en- 
tered upon  that  stage  of  his  career  wherein 
he  was  revealed  to  all  people  for  all  time  a 
great  soldier,  and  a  great  citizen,  and  a 
great  man. 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY 
DYER 


n 

THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER1 

/COTTON  MATHER,  in  the  "  Magna- 
v^  Ha,"  makes  no  mention  of  the  name 
of  Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson.  He  gives  an 
account  of  her  opinions,  but  omits  her 
name  out  of  regard  for  her  relatives, 
among  whom,  he  says,  there  are  so  many 
worthy  and  useful  persons.  He  calls  her 
an  Erroneous  Gentlewoman.  He  says  that 
she  had  a  haughty  carriage,  a  busy  spirit, 
and  a  voluble  tongue;  but  he  cannot  deny 
that  she  had  also  a  competent  wit.  This 
wit  she  exercised  in  the  organization  and 
maintenance  of  a  Woman's  Club. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson  was  the  first  person  in 
the  country  to  perceive  the  importance  of 
assembling  the  women  of  the  neighborhood 
for  mutual  cultivation  of  mind  and  for  the 
direction  of  public  opinion.  Mather  says 

1  This  Paper  was  the  Founder's  Lecture  at  Bryn  Mawr 
College,  1908. 


42  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYEE 

that  these  meetings  used  to  be  called  "  Gos- 
sipings,"  but  the  gossiping  was  of  a  very 
serious  and  improving  sort.  The  sixty  or 
eighty  women  who  met  every  week  at  Mrs. 
Hutchinson's  house  in  School  Street  came 
to  listen  to  her  exposition  of  the  sermon 
which  Mr.  John  Cotton  had  preached  on 
the  previous  Sunday.  She  would  repeat 
the  sermon,  point  by  point,  by  way  of  re- 
freshing the  memory  of  her  hearers ;  and 
"  after  the  Bepetition,"  says  Mather, 
' '  she  would  make  her  Explicatory  and  Ap- 
plicatory  Declamations."  These  Explica- 
tory and  Applicatory  Declamations  soon 
brought  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  her  club 
under  the  censure  of  the  church.  For  the 
interpreter  allowed  herself  a  large  liberty 
of  difference.  Sometimes  she  agreed  with 
the  preacher,  but  sometimes  she  found  him 
in  error.  Of  Mr.  Cotton  she  approved ;  but 
when  Mr.  Wilson,  his  colleague,  preached, 
she  did  not  hesitate  to  show  the  women  of 
the  congregation  the  weak  places  in  his  ser- 
mon, nor  to  subject  his  theology  to  her 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  48 

lively  criticism.  She  divided  both  the 
clergy  and  the  laity  of  the  colony  into 
two  classes — conventional  Christians,  who 
were  living  under  a  Covenant  of  Works,  to 
the  peril  of  their  souls,  and  genuine  Chris- 
tians, who  were  living  under  a  Covenant  of 
Grace.  And  she  finally  told  the  club  that  of 
all  the  ministers  of  the  neighborhood  only 
two — Mr.  Cotton  and  Mr.  Wheelwright,  her 
brother-in-law — were  under  the  Covenant 
of  Grace. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson's  "  Scandalous,  Dan- 
gerous, and  Enchanting  Extravagancies," 
to  quote  again  from  the  "Magnalia,"  went 
straight  in  the  face  of  the  Puritan  theory 
of  government.  The  men  of  Massachusetts 
Bay  had  in  mind  the  constitution  of  the 
Jewish  people  after  their  return  from  ex- 
ile, when  they  were  ruled  not  by  princes 
but  by  priests.  They  had  established,  ac- 
cordingly, an  administration  of  God,  in  the 
form  of  a  state  wherein  the  franchise  was 
restricted  to  the  members  of  the  church 
and  among  whose  officers  the  ministers  had 


44  THE  HANGING  OF  MAEY  DYER 

high  places.  They  endeavored,  in  consist- 
ence with  this  ideal,  to  surround  the  per- 
son of  the  minister  with  all  respect  and 
reverence.  He  was  to  be  heard  with  pro- 
found attention ;  his  voice  was  to  be  obedi- 
ently heeded,  as  a  voice  from  heaven.  The 
stability  of  both  church  and  state  was  felt 
to  rest  upon  the  devout  submission  of  the 
people  to  the  mind  of  the  clergy.  That,  at 
least,  was  the  opinion  of  the  clergy.  And 
here,  of  a  sudden,  was  Mrs.  Hutchinson, 
with  her  competent  wit  and  her  enchant- 
ing extravagancies,  differing  from  the 
preacher,  and  saying  so  with  all  freedom 
and  force  of  language  to  more  than  sixty 
women  every  week.  It  was  not  only  an 
heretical  and  schismatical  position,  but  was 
fairly  revolutionary.  It  undermined  the 
universal  foundations.  Indeed,  it  came  out 
clearly  as  a  very  practical  peril  when  the 
Pequot  war  arose,  and  the  men  of  Boston 
were  called  to  aid  in  fighting  the  Indians, 
and  many  of  them  were  perplexed  in  con- 
science, and  doubtful  whether  to  go  or  stay, 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  45 

because  Mrs.  Hutchinson  said  that  their 
chaplain,  the  Eev.  Mr.  Wilson,  was  under 
a  Covenant  of  Works. 

Finally,  a  council  was  held  at  Cambridge 
to  decide  what  to  do  with  Mrs.  Hutchinson, 
and  she  was  formally  condemned  and  ex- 
communicated, and  the  first  woman's  club 
in  this  country  was  ignominiously  dis- 
solved and  forbidden  to  meet  again.  Mrs. 
Hutchinson  and  her  friends  were  found  to 
be  guilty  of  "  eighty-five  erroneous  opin- 
ions and  nine  unwholesome  expressions." 
The  statistics  show  the  thoroughness  with 
which  the  examination  of  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son's  theology  was  conducted.  Pope  Pius 
X,  looking  over  the  whole  field  of  modern 
thought,  notices  only  sixty-five  erroneous 
opinions ! 

The  Cambridge  meeting-house  was 
crowded  on  that  March  day  in  1638.  All 
the  authorities,  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  had 
each  his  separate  word  of  malediction. 
Anne  Hutchinson  sat  silent.  Dudley,  the 
Deputy  Governor,  remarked  that  though 


46     THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

she  had  repented  in  writing,  there  was  no 
repentance  in  her  face;  probably  not. 
Finally,  John  Wilson  pronounced  the  sen- 
tence: "  Therefore,  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  in  the  name  of  the 
church,  I  do  not  only  pronounce  you  worthy 
to  be  cast  out,  but  I  do  cast  you  out ;  and  in 
the  name  of  Christ,  I  do  deliver  you  up  to 
Satan,  that  you  may  learn  no  more  to  blas- 
pheme, to  seduce  and  to  lie;  and  I  do  ac- 
count you  from  this  time  forth  to  be  a 
Heathen  and  Publican,  and  so  to  be  held  of 
all  the  Brethren  and  Sisters  of  this  congre- 
gation and  of  others ;  therefore  I  command 
you  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  and  of  this 
church  as  a  Leper  to  withdraw  yourself  out 
of  this  congregation."  The  formula  was 
not  so  long  nor  so  anatomically  explicit  as 
the  major  excommunication,  but  it  was 
quite  as  effective. 

As  Anne  Hutchinson,  in  obedience  to  the 
terms  of  this  imprecation,  made  her  soli- 
tary way  out  of  the  meeting-house,  one 
woman  rose  up  and  took  her  hand  and 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  47 

walked  out  with  her.  This  woman  was 
Mary  Dyer. 

It  is  probable  that  Mary  Dyer  would 
have  done  as  much  as  that  for  any  perse- 
cuted woman,  out  of  the  kindness  of  her 
heart  and  because  of  her  instinctive  sympa- 
thy with  the  unpopular  and  the  oppressed. 
But  she  was  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  particular 
friend  and  disciple.  Her  distress  on  Mrs. 
Hutchinson's  account  had  already  brought 
upon  her  a  domestic  grief  which,  in  that 
coarse  age,  had  subjected  her  to  the  jeers 
of  her  neighbors.  The  two  had  suffered 
together,  and  together  they  had  found 
strength,  and  solace  in  sorrow,  in  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Inward  Light. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Inward  Light  has 
been  believed  among  Christians  since  the 
day  when  the  apostles  said,  "  It  seemed 
good  to  the  Holy  Ghost  and  to  us."  That 
bold  sentence  is  the  classic  expression  of  it. 
The  apostles  and  brethren  thereby  affirmed 
a  direct  communication  between  God  and 
themselves,  and  a  sense  of  duty  derived 


48  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

from  that  divine  disclosure.  They  de- 
clared, therefore,  that  though  they  knew 
very  well  what  the  Church  said  and  what 
the  Bible  said,  they  proposed  to  do  other- 
wise. The  question  under  debate  was  the 
obligation  of  the  law  of  Moses.  There  was 
no  doubt  about  the  law ;  there  it  was,  plain 
as  the  blue  sky.  But  they  decided  not  to 
enforce  it.  They  resolved  unanimously 
that  a  man  might  be  a  good  Christian  with- 
out the  ceremonies  or  the  sacraments  which 
were  enjoined  in  the  Bible  and  universal  in 
the  Church.  It  was  the  most  radical  action 
ever  taken  by  any  body  of  reasonable 
Christians.  The  Lutheran  omission  of  the 
bishops,  and  the  Quaker  omission  of  the 
sacraments,  were  conservative  in  compari- 
son with  it.  This  action,  thus  contradicting 
all  authority,  was  taken  in  obedience  to  the 
Inward  Light. 

The  assurance  of  the  Inward  Light  has 
always  been  the  reinforcement  of  the  indi- 
vidual against  the  dominance  of  the  institu- 
tion. The  institution  looms  up  high  as  the 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  49 

hills  and  wide  as  the  horizon,  demanding 
the  submission  and  abasement  of  the  indi- 
vidual ;  you  must  do  as  we  say,  and  believe 
as  we  teach.  But  the  individual  rises  in 
protest  and  revolt.  In  the  days  of  the 
Early  Church  he  is  a  Montanist,  saying, 
"  We  lay  folk  are  priests  as  well  as  you." 
In  the  Middle  Ages  he  is  a  mystic,  going 
straight  to  God  without  the  mediation  of 
rites  or  persons.  In  later  times,  he  is  a 
Quaker,  keeping  devout  silence  that  he  may 
hear  God  speaking  in  his  soul. 

The  followers  of  the  Inward  Light  have 
always  been  obnoxious  to  the  established 
order.  Men  in  authority  have  plainly  per- 
ceived that  these  are  of  a  non-conforming 
spirit,  holding  the  law  of  their  own  souls 
above  all  laws  made  by  courts  ecclesiastical 
or  civil,  and  defying  the  oppression  of  uni- 
formity. The  Franciscan  friar,  who  both 
in  public  and  in  private  abused  the  very 
name  of  St.  Catherine,  and  scorned  her 
"  with  so  orgulous  a  mind/'  and  the  other 
Franciscan  who,  while  his  brethren  were  in 


50  THE  HANGING  OF  MAEY  DYER 
the  choir  of  San  Domenico  after  dinner, 
catching  sight  of  St.  Catherine  in  the 
church  in  an  ecstasy,  being  in  a  trance  as 
she  prayed,  "  came  down  and  pricked  her 
in  many  places  with  a  needle,"  thus  re- 
vealed by  word  and  deed  the  instinctive 
irritation  and  enmity  of  the  conservative 
mind  against  the  person  who  claims  to  talk 
with  God.  Wilson  and  Dudley  and  Win- 
throp  and  Shepard  felt  the  same  way. 
When  Mrs.  Hutchinson  affirmed  that ' '  her 
Faith  was  not  produced  and  scarce  ever 
strengthened  by  the  public  Ministry  of  the 
Word,  but  by  her  own  private  Meditations 
and  Revelations,"  every  public  Minister  of 
the  Word  felt  himself  personally  affronted. 
And  when  she  compared  herself  to  Daniel, 
and  likened  the  magistrates  to  the  presi- 
dents and  princes  who  cast  Daniel  into  the 
den  of  lions,  the  magistrates  were  of  the 
same  mind  with  the  ministers.  And  both 
agreed  with  him  who  said,  as  touching  Mrs. 
Hutchinson,  that '  *  one  would  hardly  have 
guessed  her  to  be  an  Antitype  of  Daniel, 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  51 

but  rather  of  the  lions,  after  they  were  let 
loose." 

But  to  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  Mrs.  Dyer 
the  religion  of  the  magistrates  and  min- 
isters was  cold  and  hard  and  formal.  They 
found  God  by  a  way  more  direct  and  imme- 
diate, entering  into  the  consciousness  of 
His  presence  in  the  sanctuary  of  their  own 
souls.  And  what  they  heard  from  Him  in 
such  blessed  intimacy,  that  they  spoke  and 
followed. 

Mary  Dyer  came  to  this  country  with  her 
husband  in  1635.  They  had  lived  in  Lon- 
don, where  William  Dyer  had  been  a  mil- 
liner in  the  New  Exchange.  Mrs.  Dyer 
is  described  by  a  Dutch  writer,  Gerald 
Croese,  as  "  a  person  of  no  mean  extract 
and  parentage,  of  an  estate  pretty  plenti- 
ful, of  a  comely  stature  and  countenance, 
of  a  piercing  knowledge  in  many  things, 
of  a  wonderful  sweet  and  pleasant  dis- 
course, so  fit  for  great  affairs  that  she 
wanted  nothing  that  was  manly,  except 
only  the  name  and  the  sex."  George 


52  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

Bishop,  whose  book,  "  New  England 
Judged,"  was  written  the  next  year  after 
her  death,  depicts  her  as  "  a  comely  grave 
Woman,  and  of  a  goodly  Personage,  and 
one  of  good  Report,  having  a  Husband  of 
an  Estate,  fearing  the  Lord,  and  a  Mother 
of  Children."  Even  Governor  Winthrop 
admits  that  she  was  "  a  very  proper  and 
fair  woman,"  though  he  adds  that  she  was 
"  notoriously  infected  with  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son's  errors,  and  very  censorious  and 
troublesome,  she  being  of  a  very  proud 
spirit,  and  much  addicted  to  revelations." 
The  fact,  which  appears  in  such  writing  of 
hers  as  remains,  that  she  was  better  edu- 
cated than  was  then  the  custom  of  women, 
may  have  increased  the  suspicion  and  dis- 
like with  which  she  was  regarded  by  the 
Governor.  For  it  was  Winthrop  who  said 
of  poor  Ann  Hopkins,  "  a  godly  young 
woman,  and  of  special  parts, ' '  who  was  re- 
ported to  have  lost  her  wits  ' '  by  occasion 
of  her  giving  herself  wholly  to  reading  and 
writing,"  that  "  if  she  had  attended  her 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  53 

household  affairs,  and  not  gone  out  of  her 
way  and  calling  to  meddle  in  such  things  as 
are  proper  for  men,  whose  minds  are 
stronger,  etc.,  she  had  kept  her  wits,  and 
might  have  improved  them  usefully  and 
honorably  in  the  place  God  had  set  her." 

William  and  Mary  were  at  once  admitted 
to  membership  in  the  Boston  church,  of 
which  John  Wilson  was  the  pastor  and 
John  Cotton  the  teacher.  The  next  year 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  began  her  meetings,  hav- 
ing the  Dyers  among  her  intimate  friends 
and  followers.  When  Mr.  Wheelwright  was 
condemned,  preparatory  to  the  excommuni- 
cation of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  William  Dyer 
was  one  of  the  signers  of  a  protest  which 
maintained  that  by  his  condemnation  the 
church  in  Boston  had  condemned  the  truth 
of  Christ.  He  was  therefore  disfranchised 
and  disarmed.  Presently,  when  the  Hutch- 
insons  went  into  exile,  the  Dyers  went  with 
them.  They  were  among  the  eighteen 
founders  of  Portsmouth,  Ehode  Island,  in 
1638,  and  among  the  eight  founders  of 


54  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

Newport  in  1639.  William  Dyer  was 
shortly  made  secretary  of  Portsmouth  and 
Newport,  and  thereafter  held  various  re- 
sponsible and  honorable  offices,  becoming 
attorney  general  of  the  colony  in  1649. 
Two  years  after  he  went  to  England  on 
public  business.  Thither  his  wife  had  pre- 
ceded him.  He  returned,  but  she  remained 
for  five  years.  During  that  time  she  be- 
came a  Quaker. 

The  Quakers  were  related  to  the  Puri- 
tans as  the  Abolitionists  were  related  to 
the  friends  of  freedom  before  the  Civil 
War.  They  were  extreme  persons  who 
were  determined  to  carry  the  principles 
of  Protestantism  to  their  logical  conclu- 
sions. The  Puritans  complained  that  the 
Church  of  England  had  stopped  halfway 
in  the  work  of  reformation ;  but  the  Quak- 
ers made  the  same  complaint  of  the  Puri- 
tans. Thereupon  the  Puritans  answered 
the  Quakers  in  the  same  terms  in  which 
they  themselves  had  been  answered  by  the 
Churchmen, — in  terms  of  expulsion  and 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER     55 

prohibition,  enforced  by  fine  and  imprison- 
ment. The  fact  is  of  interest  as  interpret- 
ing the  contention  in  which  Charles  and 
Laud  had  played  a  part  so  reprobated  by 
the  Puritan  historians.  When  we  find  the 
same  part  played  again  upon  a  smaller 
stage  by  Endicott  and  Wilson,  we  perceive 
that  it  was  no  particular  fault  of  either 
Churchman  or  Puritan,  but  belonged  to 
the  tune  and  represented  the  common  mind 
of  men.  It  was  the  habit  of  that  age  to 
think  of  religion  under  conditions  of  uni- 
formity, as  we  think  of  the  world  to-day 
under  conditions  of  gravitation  or  evolu- 
tion. The  notion  that  the  Puritans  came 
over  here  to  establish  freedom  to  worship 
God,  in  the  sense  in  which  that  phrase  is 
understood  by  us  at  present,  is  without 
foundation  in  fact.  They  came  to  escape  a 
uniformity  which  they  disliked,  in  order  to 
set  up  another  uniformity  of  their  own 
construction.  They  had  no  intention  of  es- 
tablishing in  Massachusetts  a  free  church 
in  a  free  state,  which  should  carry  with  it 


56  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

a  hospitable  recognition  of  dissent.  They 
detested  dissent.  They  dealt  with  Roger 
Williams  as  the  Church  of  England  had 
dealt  with  John  Cotton.  When  Governor 
Winthrop  said  to  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  "  We 
must  restrain  you  from  taking  this  course. 
We  are  your  judges  and  not  you  ours.  We 
must  compel  you  to  it,"  every  exiled  min- 
ister in  the  company  heard  an  echo  of  his 
own  trial.  This  consensus  of  ecclesiastical 
opinion  is  to  be  taken  into  account  in  our 
judgments  of  both  the  Puritans  and  the 
Churchmen  of  that  time.  It  is  to  be  re- 
membered in  our  estimates  of  James  and 
Charles  on  one  side  of  the  sea,  and  of  Win- 
throp and  Endicott  on  the  other  side. 
They  were  alike  convinced  of  the  essential 
importance  of  uniformity. 

Against  this  uniformity,  the  Quakers  op- 
posed themselves.  And  against  the  dis- 
senting and  disturbing  Quaker,  the  Puri- 
tans in  England  and  New  England  lifted 
the  hard  hand  of  authority.  It  was  while 
Mary  Dyer  was  in  the  midst  of  her  visit 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  57 

to  England  that  George  Fox  reckoned  that 
there  seldom  were  fewer  than  a  thousand 
Quakers  in  the  English  jails.  She  knew 
that,  when  she  became  a  Quaker.  It  was 
probably  one  of  the  arguments  which  at- 
tracted and  convinced  her. 

The  Quakers  differed  from  other  Puri- 
tans in  their  emphasis  on  simplicity  and 
immediacy. 

They  proposed  to  return  to  the  primi- 
tive simplicity  of  Christian  behavior. 
They  found  themselves  in  a  society  which, 
from  their  point  of  view,  was  deplorably 
formalized  and  secularized.  They  deter- 
mined to  be  absolutely  honest  with  them- 
selves and  with  their  neighbors;  and  as  a 
symbol  of  that  honesty,  they  refused  to  ad- 
dress a  single  person  with  a  plural  pro- 
noun. They  disused  the  conventions  of 
formal  courtesy;  they  wore  their  hats  in 
the  presence  of  princes  and  magistrates. 
They  disdained  the  passing  modes  of 
dress ;  when  George  Fox  made  him  a  stout 
suit  of  leather,  he  intended  to  wear  it  in 


58  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

defiance  of  all  fashions  to  the  end  of  his 
days.  They  disliked  even  such  stated  ar- 
rangements of  services  as  the  Puritans  had 
retained,  disused  the  sacraments,  dis- 
missed the  ministers,  and  prayed  not  only 
in  such  words  but  at  such  times  as  the 
Spirit  gave  them  utterance.  All  this  was 
for  the  sake  of  simplicity,  and  it  attracted 
people  with  the  unfailing  attraction  of  the 
simple  life. 

To  this  they  added  the  doctrine  of  imme- 
diacy. Cotton  Mather,  in  the  * '  Magnalia, ' ' 
is,  of  course,  a  prejudiced  witness  as  to 
the  teaching  of  the  New  England  Quakers. 
He  wrote  in  a  day  of  sharp  and  discourte- 
ous controversy.  "  Reader,"  he  says,  "  I 
can  foretell  what  usage  I  shall  find  among 
the  Quakers  for  this  chapter  of  our  Church 
History :  for  a  Worthy  Man  that  writes  of 
them  has  observed, '  For  Pride  and  Hypoc- 
rosie  and  Hellish  Eevilings  against  the 
painful  Ministers  of  Christ  I  know  no  peo- 
ple that  can  match  them.  '  "  And  he 
quotes  from  contemporary  Quaker  pam- 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYEE  59 

phlets  a  considerable  list  of  the  epithets 
which  he  may  expect:  such  as,  "  Thou 
Fiery  Fighter  and  Green-headed  Trump- 
eter/' "  thou  Mountebank  priest,"  "  thou 
Mole,  thou  Tinker,  thou  Lizzard,  thou  Bell 
of  no  Metal  but  the  tone  of  a  Kettle,  thou 
Whirlpool,  thou  Whirligig,  thou  Wheelbar- 
row." These  are  not  the  conditions  of 
weather  in  which  to  look  for  clear  skies, 
and  to  see  truth  in  the  serene  light  of  day. 
But  when  we  find  Mather,  in  reprobation, 
saying  of  the  Quakers  that  "  they  made 
themselves  to  be  Christ's  as  truly  as  ever 
was  Jesus  the  Son  of  Mary,"  that  "  the 
whole  History  of  the  Gospel  they  beheld  as 
Acted  over  again  every  day  as  Literally  as 
it  ever  was  in  Palestine,"  and  that  "  every 
Day  is  the  Lord's  Day,"  we  perceive  in  his 
opponents  the  true  spirit  of  the  mystic. 
To  them  religion  was  a  present  reality. 
God  was  in  all  life,  and  their  communica- 
tion with  Him  was  constant  and  intimate. 
They  believed  in  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  dis- 
tinction; they  were  a  Covenant  of  Grace, 


60  THE  HANGING  OF  MAEY  DYER 

and  outside  lay  the  world  in  a  Covenant  of 
Works. 

Out  of  this  fatal  formalism  and  remote- 
ness from  God  they  purposed  to  awaken 
the  society  about  them.  That  was  their 
mission.  They  were  possessed,  or  ob- 
sessed, with  the  necessity  of  bearing  their 
witness.  They  were  essentially  aggres- 
sive. They  could  not  be  silent.  Herein 
they  differed  from  some  of  their  prede- 
cessors, the  mystics,  who  were  content  to 
withdraw  themselves  from  the  world. 
They  were  Protestants  of  the  Protestants, 
and  protested  daily.  And  this  they  did  in 
ways  which  were  very  inconvenient  to  the 
community. 

The  eccentricities  of  the  Quakers  have 
been  unduly  multiplied  and  magnified  by  a 
natural  process  of  exaggeration.  A  few 
of  them  behaved  themselves  in  so  dramatic 
a  manner  that  the  things  which  they  did 
got  into  the  general  memory,  and  have 
never  been  forgotten.  And  these  acts  came 
to  be  regarded  as  characteristic  of  the 


THE  HANGING  OF  MAEY  DYER  61 

Quakers,  the  impression  being  that  they 
happened  every  day.  It  was  only  one 
Quaker,  however,  on  a  single  occasion,  who 
walked  about  the  streets  having  on  his  head 
a  pan  of  fire  and  brimstone.  Only  one 
dressed  herself  in  sackcloth  and  blackened 
her  face  and  in  that  prophetic  guise  pre- 
sented herself  in  the  congregation  at  serv- 
ice time.  Lydia  Wardwell  and  Deborah 
Wilson  behaved  themselves  in  a  manner 
even  more  disconcerting,  but  they  had  no 
imitators.  Sarah  Gibbons  and  Dorothy 
Waugh  rose  up  in  meeting  and  bore  their 
emphatic  witness  to  the  emptiness  of  the 
sermon ;  they  broke  some  empty  bottles  by 
banging  them  together ;  one  would  imagine 
from  some  writers  that  it  was  a  part  of  the 
regular  business  of  the  sexton  to  sweep  up 
broken  glass  from  the  floor  of  the  meeting- 
house every  Sunday  morning ;  but  this  was 
a  rare  occurrence.  The  Quakers  did  in- 
terrupt a  good  many  Puritan  sermons 
with  frank  and  unsympathetic  comments; 
they  did  rise  up  a  good  many  times,  after 


62  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

the  sermon  was  over,  and  proceed  to  ex- 
pound the  text  in  their  own  way ;  they  did 
gather  crowds  about  them  and  preach  to 
them  in  the  streets ;  being  altogether  unin- 
structed  in  theology,  they  did  say  things 
which  were  as  erroneous  as  they  were  of- 
fensive; they  gave  criticism  the  long  end 
of  the  handle.  But  these  were  exceptions 
to  a  general  rule  of  modest  and  grave  de- 
meanor. The  unpardonable  sin  of  the 
Quakers  was  that  they  refused  to  agree 
with  the  Puritans,  and  they  greatly  aggra- 
vated the  offence  by  trying  to  convert  the 
Puritans  to  their  own  opinion.  They  were 
mightily  in  earnest  about  it,  and  the  Puri- 
tans on  their  side  were  mightily  in  earnest 
also.  That  is  the  heart  of  the  situation. 

The  first  Quakers  who  came  to  Massa- 
chusetts arrived  in  July,  1656.  That  was 
the  year  in  which  George  Fox  said  that 
a  thousand  Quakers  lay  in  English  jails. 
It  was  a  month  after  a  public  day  of  hu- 
miliation appointed  by  the  General  Court 
of  Massachusetts  "  to  seek  the  face  of  God 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  63 

in  behalf  of  our  native  country  in  refer- 
ence to  the  abounding  of  errors,  especially 
those  of  the  Eanters  and  Quakers."  Un- 
der these  strained  conditions  came  Ann 
Austin  and  Mary  Fisher,  for  the  purpose 
of  teaching  Quaker  doctrine,  bringing  with 
them  a  hundred  Quaker  books.  To  the 
Puritan  mind  at  that  time,  this  was  an  im- 
portation of  the  plague,  and  the  authori- 
ties dealt  with  it  accordingly.  Governor 
Endicott  was  absent,  in  Salem,  but  Deputy 
Governor  Bellingham  encountered  the  in- 
vaders. He  had  the  missionaries  seized 
while  yet  they  were  on  board  the  ship, 
searched  their  bags  and  boxes,  and  took 
possession  of  their  books  and  of  their  per- 
sons. The  books  he  caused  to  be  burned  by 
the  common  hangman  in  the  market-place 
of  Boston ;  the  Quakers  he  shut  up  in  jail. 
They  were  kept  in  close  confinement,  not 
suffered  to  speak  nor  to  be  spoken  to,  pen 
and  ink  and  candle  taken  from  them  to 
prevent  them  from  writing,  and  a  board 
nailed  across  the  window  to  keep  anybody 


64  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

from  as  much  as  seeing  them.  After  being 
examined  for  witch  marks,  they  were  put 
on  board  the  next  ship  and  sent  to  the  Bar- 
badoes.  Endicott,  when  he  came  back,  said 
that  had  he  been  there  he  would  have  had 
them  whipped,  but  the  authorities  after- 
ward took  some  credit  to  themselves  for 
self-restraint  and  gentleness. 

Hardly  had  Ann  Austin  and  Mary  Fish- 
er got  out  of  sight  of  land  when  there  came 
eight  missionaries  more,  four  men  and 
four  women.  They  were  immediately  im- 
prisoned, and  after  eleven  weeks  were  sent 
to  England  in  the  same  ship  which  had 
brought  them. 

It  became  plain  to  the  authorities  of 
church  and  state  that  they  were  to  be  beset 
with  Quakers,  and  they  proceeded  to  en- 
act laws  by  which  to  defend  the  colony 
against  this  peril.  "  Whereas,"  they  said, 
"  there  is  a  cursed  sect  of  heretics  lately 
risen  up  in  the  world,  which  are  commonly 
called  Quakers,  who  take  upon  themselves 
to  be  immediately  sent  of  God  infallibly 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  65 

assisted  by  the  Spirit  to  speak  and  write 
blasphemous  opinions,  despising  govern- 
ment and  the  order  of  God  in  church  and 
commonwealth,  speaking  evil  of  dignities, 
reproaching  and  reviling  magistrates  and 
ministers,  seeking  to  turn  the  people  from 
the  faith  and  gain  proselytes  to  their  per- 
nicious ways,  this  court  doth  hereby  or- 
der," thus  and  so:  namely,  that  the  cap- 
tain of  any  vessel  bringing  Quakers  shall 
be  fined  a  hundred  pounds;  that  every 
Quaker  coming  into  this  jurisdiction  shall 
be  forthwith  committed  to  the  house  of 
correction,  soundly  whipped  at  entrance, 
and  thereafter  kept  at  hard  labor  during 
the  term  of  his  imprisonment,  and  with 
lesser  penalties  for  possessing  Quaker 
books  and  defending  Quaker  opinions. 

The  first  Quakers  to  arrive  after  the  pas- 
sage of  this  law  were  Ann  Burden  and 
Mary  Dyer.  They  seem,  however,  to  have 
escaped  its  severer  provisions,  for  they 
came  on  business  of  their  own,  and  not  as 
missionaries :  Ann  Burden  to  collect  some 


66  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

debts  remaining  from  her  former  resi- 
dence, and  Mary  Dyer  to  rejoin  her  hus- 
band in  Ehode  Island. 

The  next  arrivals  felt  the  whip.  Mary 
Clark  had  twenty  stripes  with  a  scourge 
of  three  cords.  Christopher  Holder,  being 
moved  of  the  Lord  to  go  to  Salem,  and 
speaking  a  few  words  in  meeting,  after  the 
sermon,  was  "  haled  back  by  the  hair  of 
the  head,  and  his  mouth  violently  stopped 
with  a  glove  and  a  handkerchief  thrust 
thereinto  with  much  fury,"  by  one  of  the 
church  members.  He  and  his  companion, 
John  Copeland,  were  brought  to  Boston 
and  given  thirty  stripes  apiece.  They  were 
afterwards  kept  nine  weeks  in  prison  in 
the  cold  winter  without  a  fire,  and  then 
banished.  Samuel  Shattuck,  who  pulled 
away  the  hand  of  the  church  member 
who  was  choking  Christopher  Holder,  was 
brought  to  Boston  and  laid  under  bonds  to 
have  no  communication  with  Quakers,  and 
presently  was  whipped  and  banished.  This 
was  the  Samuel  Shattuck  who  afterwards, 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  67 

in  1661,  had  the  satisfaction  of  bringing 
from  England  the  royal  decree  which  for 
the  moment  opened  all  jail  doors  and 
stopped  the  persecution  of  the  Quakers ;  as 
may  be  read  in  Whittier's  verse,  in  "  The 
King's  Missive."  Lawrence  Southwick 
and  Cassandra  his  wife,  who  had  lodged 
the  Quakers  in  Salem,  aged  persons  and 
church  members,  were  admonished  and 
fined,  and  ceasing  thereafter  to  attend  the 
meetings  of  the  congregation  were  whipped 
as  a  warning  to  others.  Continuing  obsti- 
nate in  their  refusal  to  go  to  church  under 
these  conditions,  they  were  repeatedly 
fined  till  their  property  was  gone;  and 
then,  for  non-payment  of  church  fines, 
their  two  children,  a  son  and  a  daughter, 
were  seized  to  be  sold  as  slaves  in  Virginia 
or  the  Barbadoes;  but  happily  no  ship- 
master could  be  found  to  take  them. 

A  year  after  the  passage  of  the  first  law 
against  the  Quakers,  the  General  Court  en- 
acted a  second, '  *  as  an  addition  to  the  late 
order  in  reference  to  the  coming  or  bring- 


68  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYEE 

ing  in  any  of  the  cursed  sect  of  Quakers 
into  this  jurisdiction."  It  was  now  pro- 
vided that  anybody  who  should  lodge  a 
.Quaker  should  be  fined  for  such  offence  at 
the  rate  of  forty  shillings  for  every  hour 
of  such  entertainment  or  concealment; 
also,  that  every  Quaker  man  who  after  be- 
ing once  punished  and  banished  should  pre- 
sume to  return  should  have  one  of  his  ears 
cut  off  for  the  first  offence,  and  for  a  sec- 
ond offence  his  other  ear,  and  for  a  third 
offence  should  have  his  tongue  bored 
through  with  a  hot  iron.  Quaker  women 
were  to  be  punished  with  whipping  instead 
of  the  loss  of  ears,  but  for  a  third  offence 
they  must  suffer  like  the  men. 

In  May,  1658,  a  third  law  ordained  that 
every  person  "  professing  any  of  their 
pernicious  ways,  by  speaking,  writing,  or 
by  meetings  on  the  Lord's  Day,  or  at  any 
other  time,  to  strengthen  themselves,  or  to 
seduce  others  to  their  diabolical  doc- 
trines "  shall  for  every  such  transgression 
be  fined  ten  shillings. 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  69 

A  fourth  law,  dated  October,  1658,  affixed 
to  the  sentence  of  banishment  the  provi- 
sion that  a  return  after  such  expulsion 
should  be  punished  with  the  pain  of  death. 
It  was  according  to  this  law  that  Mary 
Dyer  was  hanged. 

These  four  laws,  issued  within  a  space  of 
two  years,  indicate  the  anxiety  of  the  au- 
thorities. To  them  the  Quakers  were  sheer 
anarchists,  subversive  of  both  government 
and  religion.  In  deporting  such  persons 
when  they  appeared  in  the  colony,  in  ban- 
ishing such  as  adopted  their  opinions,  and 
in  fining  and  imprisoning  such  as  shel- 
tered them,  the  Puritans  were  clearly 
within  their  rights.  This  belonged  to  their 
province  as  magistrates.  That  some  dif- 
ficulties arose  in  their  own,  consciences  and 
in  the  minds  of  their  constituents  appears 
in  the  fact  that  the  General  Court  thought 
it  wise  to  issue  a  formal  vindication  of 
themselves.  In  this  document  they  dealt 
particularly  with  the  matter  of  banishment 
upon  pain  of  death.  They  declared  that 


70  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  BYER 

the  doctrine  of  the  Quakers  was  destruc- 
tive to  the  fundamental  truths  of  religion. 
They  showed  that  the  behavior  of  the 
Quakers  was  in  contradiction  to  that  re- 
spect to  magistrates  which  is  commanded 
in  the  Bible.  They  cited  the  example  of 
wise  Solomon,  who,  having  confined  Shimei 
to  the  city  of  Jerusalem  upon  pain  of 
death,  promptly  beheaded  him  when  he 
came  out  of  bounds.  This  colony,  they  said, 
is  our  house;  anybody  who  breaks  into  it 
may  properly  be  slain  in  self-defence.  If 
in  such  violent  and  bold  attempt  the  Quak- 
ers lose  their  lives,  they  may  thank  them- 
selves as  the  blamable  cause  and  authors 
of  their  own  death.  This  colony,  they 
added,  is  our  family.  "  Who  can  make 
question  but  that  a  man  that  hath  children 
and  family  ought  to  preserve  them  from 
the  dangerous  company  of  persons  in- 
fected with  contagious,  noisome  and  mor- 
tal diseases?  and  if  such  persons  shall 
offer  to  intrude  into  the  man's  house 
amongst  his  children  and  servants,  can 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  71 

any  doubt  but  that  in  such  a  case  the 
father  of  the  family,  if  otherwise  he  can- 
not keep  them  out,  may  kill  them?  "  Thus 
they  stated  their  case,  calling  for  approval 
both  from  common  prudence  and  from 
Holy  Scripture.  Indeed,  they  were  but 
exercising  one  of  the  prerogatives  of 
nations.  They  were  keeping  the  Quak- 
ers out  of  the  colony,  as  we  endeavor 
to  exclude  undesirable  citizens  at  our 
ports. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Quakers  in  com- 
ing were  following  the  clear  guidance  of 
the  Inward  Light.  They  were  within  their 
proper  province  as  missionaries.  They 
honestly  believed  that  the  Puritans  were 
in  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and  sin,  and 
they  came  to  illuminate  them.  They  felt, 
as  the  apostles  had  felt  before  them,  that 
they  must  obey  God  rather  than  man. 
They  entered  Boston  as  Paul  and  Silas  en- 
tered Philippi,  and  if  their  mission  in- 
volved an  imprisonment  in  the  inner  jail 
and  a  fastening  of  their  feet  in  the  stocks, 


72  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

they  accepted  this,  after  the  pattern  of  the 
apostles,  as  a  part  of  the  day's  work.  If 
in  the  delivery  of  the  message  which  God 
had  given  them  they  must  face  death,  that 
also  they  did  gladly,  even  eagerly,  for  His 
sake  in  whose  name  they  spoke.  They  de- 
serve the  commendation  of  the  faithful 
missionary  and  the  praise  of  the  martyr. 
In  the  noble  army  of  martyrs  they  stand 
to  all  time,  William  Eobinson  with  St.  Po- 
thinus,  Mary  Dyer  with  St.  Perpetua ;  and 
in  their  company  the  three  whose  right 
ears  were  cut  off,  the  forty  or  fifty  who 
were  whipped  with  knotted  cords,  and  the 
unnumbered  others  who  suffered  the  spoil- 
ing of  their  goods.  "  Margaret  Brew- 
ster,"  says  the  clerk  of  the  court,  "  you 
are  to  have  your  clothes  stripped  off  to  the 
middle,  and  to  be  tied  to  a  cart's  tail  at  the 
South  Meeting-house,  and  to  be  drawn 
through  the  town  and  to  receive  twenty 
stripes  upon  your  naked  body."  "  The 
will  of  the  Lord  be  done,"  says  Margaret 
Brewster,  * '  I  am  contented. ' '  And  in  that 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  73 

grave,  serene,  and  Christian  manner,  so 
spoke  they  all. 

Thus  an  irresistible  force  encountered 
an  immovable  body.  Thus  two  sacred  and 
imperative  rights  came  into  collision. 

Of  course,  the  verdict  of  subsequent  his- 
tory has  condemned  the  Puritans.  It  has 
found  them  guilty  of  two  serious  misun- 
derstandings. They  misunderstood  hu- 
man nature,  and  they  misunderstood  the 
Quakers. 

They  were  in  error  as  to  human  nature 
in  thinking  that  the  argument  of  violence 
is  of  avail  against  the  convictions  of  con- 
science. For  every  man  who  tries  to  stop 
his  neighbor's  mouth  with  a  glove  and  a 
handkerchief,  there  will  be  another  man  to 
pull  away  his  arm;  and  whippings  at  carts' 
tails,  and  even  hangings  are  great,  appeal- 
ing arguments.  We  are  so  made  that  the 
nobler  spirits  among  us  rise  up  instinct- 
ively at  the  sight  of  such  suffering  and 
ally  themselves  with  the  sufferers.  Thus 
it  has  been  since  the  day  when  Stephen 


74  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

was  stoned  and  Saul  became  a  Christian. 
The  blood  of  the  martyr  is  the  seed  of  the 
church.  The  Quakers  proved  it.  The 
effect  of  the  Puritan  method  was  to  in- 
crease the  Quakers,  as  the  effect  of  the 
same  method  at  the  hands  of  Queen  Mary 
was  to  increase  the  Protestants,  and  the 
effect  of  the  same  method  at  the  hands  of 
Archbishop  Laud  was  to  increase  the 
Puritans.  This  we  see  clearly,  with  the 
wisdom  which  follows  the  event. 

Also  the  Puritans  were  in  error  as  to 
the  Quakers  and  their  conception  of  re- 
ligion and  of  government.  It  seemed  as 
if  a  storm  of  heresy  and  schism,  with  hail- 
stones and  coals  of  fire,  were  beating  upon 
Protestant  Christendom  from  all  points  of 
the  compass  at  the  same  time.  Every  ship 
which  sailed  into  Boston  Bay  brought  the 
news  of  the  birth  of  a  new  ism.  The  blessed 
liberty  for  which  the  reformers  had  con- 
tended had  fallen  into  license.  The  most 
essential  doctrines  of  religion,  the  most 
sacred  institutions  of  society,  were  set  at 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  75 

naught.  The  colonists  were  not  only  anx- 
ious but  nervous.  And  then  the  Quaker 
missionaries  came.  That  the  Puritans 
should  have  failed  to  understand  them  was 
inevitable.  To-day  the  immediate  asso- 
ciation of  the  name  of  "  Quaker  "  is  with 
peace,  and  quietness,  and  serenity  of  soul. 
Nothing  could  have  been  further  from  the 
minds  of  the  neighbors  of  Mary  Fisher  or 
of  Mary  Dyer. 

Mary  Dyer  had  now  been  living  in  Rhode 
Island  for  ten  years.  Under  the  large  tol- 
erance established  by  Eoger  Williams,  that 
was  a  comfortable  colony  for  Quakers. 
But  the  Quakers  were  not  contented  to  be 
comfortable.  In  June,  1659,  William  Rob- 
inson and  Marmaduke  Stevenson  were 
moved  of  the  Lord  to  pay  a  visit  to  Boston, 
and  Nicholas  Davis  and  Patience  Scott 
went  with  them.  Patience  was  eleven 
years  of  age.  She  came  of  good,  stout, 
non-conforming  stock,  her  mother  hav- 
ing been  a  sister  of  Anne  Hutchinson. 
Mrs.  Scott  had  already  experienced  the 


76  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

rigors  of  the  law.  "A  Mother  of  many 
Children,  one  that  had  lived  with  her  Hus- 
band, of  an  nnblameable  Conversation,  and 
a  Grave,  Sober  and  Ancient  Woman,  and 
of  good  Breeding,"  she  had  come  up  to 
Boston  upon  the  occasion  of  the  cutting  off 
of  three  right  ears,  and  speaking  her  mind 
with  some  righteous  freedom  concerning 
that  matter  had  been  thrown  into  prison, 
and  given  ten  stripes  with  a  three-fold 
knotted  whip,  and  promised  that  if  she 
came  again  she  should  be  hanged.  This 
did  not  deter  her  from  sending  her  little 
daughter  on  the  perilous  errand  of  bear- 
ing witness  against  a  persecuting  spirit. 
Davis  came  on  business,  seeking  opportu- 
nity to  barter  corn  with  the  heathen.  Eob- 
inson  had  been  a  merchant  in  London; 
Stevenson  had  been  a  ploughman  in  York- 
shire. "  I  was  at  the  plough,"  says  Ste- 
venson, "  in  the  East-parts  of  Yorkshire, 
in  Old-England,  and  as  I  walked  after  the 
plough  I  was  filled  with  the  Love  and  Pres- 
ence of  the  Living  God,  which  did  Eavish 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  77 

my  Heart  when  I  felt  it;  and  as  I  stood 
a  little  still,  with  my  Heart  and  Mind 
stayed  on  the  Lord,  the  Word  of  the  Lord 
came  unto  me  in  a  still,  small  Voice,  which 
I  did  hear  perfectly,  saying  to  me  in  the 
Secret  of  my  Heart  and  Conscience,  'I 
have  ordained  thee  a  Prophet  unto  the 
Nations.'  " 

These  four  being  immediately  put  in 
prison,  Mary  Dyer  was  moved  of  the  Lord 
to  visit  them,  and  was  seized  and  impris- 
oned with  them.  There  they  lay  for  three 
months  until  the  12th  of  September.  On 
that  day  they  were  brought  before  the 
court.  The  child  was  dismissed ;  the  others 
were  given  two  days  to  get  out  of  the  com- 
monwealth. Should  they  be  found  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  court  after  the  lapse 
of  forty-eight  hours,  they  were  to  be  put 
to  death.  Thereupon,  Nicholas  Davis  and 
Mary  Dyer  departed,  one  to  Plymouth  and 
the  other  to  Rhode  Island;  but  Robinson 
and  Stevenson  were  "constrained  in  the 
love  and  power  of  the  Lord"  not  to  depart 


78  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

but    to    try    the    bloody    laws    unto    the 
death. 

Then,  from  the  four  winds,  zealous  Quak- 
ers started  for  Boston.  First  came  Chris- 
topher Holder,  and  was  at  once  thrust  into 
prison.  On  the  8th  of  October,  came  Mary 
Dyer  to  visit  him,  and  was  imprisoned  also. 
After  them  came  Hope  Clifton,  and  Mary 
Scott,  and  Robert  Harper,  and  Daniel 
Gold,  and  Henry  King,  and  Hannah 
Phelps,  and  Mary  Trask,  and  Margaret 
Smith,  and  Provided  Southwick.  On  the 
13th,  William  Robinson  and  Marmaduke 
Stevenson  returned,  and  with  Mrs.  Alice 
Cowland,  "  who  came  to  bring  linen 
wherein  to  wrap  the  dead  Bodies  of  those 
who  were  to  Suffer."  The  roll  of  linen  in 
the  arms  of  Alice  Cowland  evidenced  the 
grim  spirit  in  which  the  principals  in  this 
tragedy  entered  upon  their  parts.  ' '  These 
all  came  together,"  says  the  Quaker  chron- 
icle, ' '  in  the  Moving  and  Power  of  the 
Lord,  as  one,  to  look  your  Bloody  Laws  in 
the  Face,  and  to  accompany  those  who 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  79 

should  suffer  by  them."  They  were  bent 
upon  a  perfectly  definite  purpose,  to  break 
the  law  into  a  thousand  pieces  by  endur- 
ing its  hideous  penalty.  They  desired  to 
show  to  all  good  people  what  manner  of 
law  it  was,  whereby  the  enormities  of  the 
reign  of  Bloody  Mary  were  enacted  by 
Puritan  ministers  and  magistrates  in 
Massachusetts. 

This  desire  was  promptly  gratified.  On 
the  19th  of  October,  Eobinson  and  Ste- 
venson and  Mary  Dyer  were  had  before  the 
court  and  demanded  why  they  came  again, 
being  banished  upon  pain  of  death.  They 
replied  that  the  ground  and  cause  of  this 
coming  was  of  the  Lord  and  in  obedience 
to  Him.  The  governor,  manifestly  reluc- 
tant to  proceed,  sent  them  back  to  prison. 
But  the  next  day  was  a  prayer  day,  with 
a  sermon  by  John  Wilson.  He  was  the 
pastor  whom  Anne  Hutchinson  had  in- 
stinctively detested ;  when  she  saw  that  he 
was  to  be  the  preacher  of  a  Sunday  morn- 
ing, she  had  on  several  occasions  risen  up 


80  THE  HANGING  OF  MAKY  DYER 

at  the  announcement  of  the  text  and 
marched  out  of  the  meeting-house.  He  had 
assaulted  Obadiah  Holmes,  the  Baptist,  in 
the  court-room,  striking  him  in  the  face, 
and  cursing  him  in  the  name  of  Jesus.  He 
had  flung  Quaker  books  into  the  hangman's 
fire,  saying,  "From  the  devil  they  came, 
to  the  devil  they  go."  He  had  declared 
that  the  best  way  to  convert  the  Quakers 
was  to  kill  them,  drawing  his  hand  across 
his  throat.  It  was  the  misfortune  of  the 
commonwealth  that  this  man,  coarse  and 
hard  and  malignantly  orthodox,  was  in  a 
position  of  influence  and  authority.  He 
preached  an  appropriate  sermon.  After 
the  sermon  and  the  service  were  ended, 
the  governor  sat  again  upon  the  judgment 
seat,  and  in  a  faint  voice,  as  a  man  sick 
either  in  body  or  at  heart,  spoke  to  this 
effect:  "We  have  made  many  laws,  and 
endeavored  by  several  ways  to  keep  you 
from  us,  and  neither  whipping  nor  impris- 
onment, nor  banishment  upon  pain  of  death 
will  keep  you  from  among  us.  I  desire  not 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  81 

your  death. ' '  Nevertheless,  he  pronounced 
their  sentence:  "You  shall  be  had  back 
to  the  place  from  whence  you  came,  and 
from  thence  to  the  place  of  execution,  to 
be  hanged  on  the  gallows  till  you  are 
dead."  Robinson  asked  leave  to  read  a 
statement,  but  was  refused.  Stevenson 
was  permitted  to  make  a  brief  speech. 
Mary  Dyer  said:  "  The  will  of  the  Lord 
be  done."  "  Take  her  away,  marshal," 
ordered  the  governor.  "  Yea,"  she  an- 
swered, "  joyfully  shall  I  go." 

During  the  week  which  intervened  be- 
tween the  sentence  and  the  execution  so 
much  excitement  appeared  among  the  peo- 
ple, and  so  many  crowded  about  the  prison 
windows,  that  a  military  guard  was  set 
against  a  possible  rescue  and  release.  On 
the  day  appointed,  after  prayers,  with  beat 
of  drums  and  escort  of  soldiers,  the  three 
condemned  persons  were  taken  to  the  Com- 
mon. So  great  was  the  crowd  that,  after 
the  execution  was  over,  the  bridge  which 
then  connected  Boston  with  the  mainland 


82  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

at  the  North  End,  broke  with  their  weight. 
The  Quakers  would  have  addressed  them, 
but  as  often  as  they  tried  to  speak,  the 
drums  were  beaten.  Mr.  Wilson  derided 
them,  shaking  his  fist  in  their  faces,  say- 
ing "Shall  such  folks  as  you  come  before 
authority  with  your  hats  on?  "  But  the 
three  were  already  uplifted  in  spirit  above 
the  contentions  of  the  world.  As  they  came 
on,  hand  in  hand,  Mary  Dyer  between  the 
two  men,  she  said,  "It  is  an  hour  of  the 
greatest  joy  I  can  enjoy  in  this  world.  No 
eye  can  see,  no  ear  can  hear,  no  tongue 
can  speak,  no  heart  can  understand,  the 
sweet  incomes  and  refreshings  of  the  spirit 
of  the  Lord  which  now  I  enjoy."  The  gal- 
lows was  a  stout  elm,  traditionally  the 
"  Great  Tree,"  which,  till  1876,  stood  be- 
side the  Frog  Pond.  The  prisoner,  having 
the  noose  about  his  neck,  climbed  by  a  lad- 
der to  a  branch,  and  the  ladder  was  pulled 
away.  Thus  died  William  Eobinson,  say- 
ing, "I  suffer  for  Christ,  in  whom  I  lived 
and  for  whom  I  die."  Thus  died  Marma- 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER  83 

duke  Stevenson,  saying,  "  Be  it  known  to 
all  this  day  that  we  suffer  not  as  evil-doers, 
but  for  conscience  sake." 

Mary  Dyer  sat  at  the  foot  of  the  tree, 
beholding  the  martyrdom  of  her  friends. 
Then  her  arms  were  bound,  her  skirts  were 
tied  about  her  feet,  her  face  was  covered 
with  Mr.  Wilson's  handkerchief,  and  she 
was  lifted  to  the  ladder.  And  there  stand- 
ing, having  suffered  already  the  severest 
pangs  of  death,  having  died  to  the  world, 
she  was  suddenly  informed  that  she  was  re- 
prieved. Her  son  in  Ehode  Island  had 
petitioned  for  her  release,  and  the  petition 
had  been  granted.  She  was  to  be  sent 
home.  This  fruitless  agony  of  expectation 
had  been  privately  ordered  by  the  court 
for  the  sake  of  its  impression  on  her  mind. 

For  a  moment  Mary  Dyer  knew  not  what 
to  say  or  do.  "Waiting  on  the  Lord  to 
know  His  pleasure  is  so  sudden  a  change, 
having  given  herself  up  to  die."  But  she 
had  no  choice.  She  was  taken  back  to 
prison,  whence  she  wrote  a  letter  refusing 


84  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

to  accept  her  life.  The  next  day,  she  was 
put  on  horseback  and  conveyed  out  of  the 
commonwealth.  She  spent  the  winter  on 
Shelter  Island, 

"Where,  ocean-walled  and  wiser  than  his  age, 
The  lord  of  Shelter  scorned  the  bigots'  rage." 

There  her  name,  with  those  of  others  who 
found  like  shelter  on  that  island,  is  in- 
scribed on  a  memorial  stone  erected  by 
Professor  Horsford.  She  avoided  her  fam- 
ily, not  for  lack  of  love,  but  that  she  might 
not  be  prevented  by  them  from  her  firm  de- 
termination. When  the  spring  was  green, 
she  made  her  way  secretly  to  Providence. 
In  the  middle  of  May,  she  presented  her- 
self with  all  boldness  in  Boston. 

The  law  of  banishment  on  pain  of  death 
was  still  in  force.  The  martyrdom  of  Rob- 
inson and  Stevenson  had  not  availed  for  its 
repeal.  The  authorities  had  justified  their 
course  in  a  public  statement,  and  the  peo- 
ple had  accepted  the  situation.  The  great 
work  was  still  to  be  done.  The  hideousness 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYEE  85 

of  the  law  was  still  to  be  demonstrated. 
Mary  Dyer  went  to  demonstrate  it.  She 
was  under  no  illusion.  She  knew  by  awful 
experience  that  the  court  would  keep  its 
word.  She  had  died  once,  and  in  the  name 
of  God  and  of  the  cause  and  truth  for  which 
she  stood,  she  went  to  die  again. 

''Are  you  the  same  Mary  Dyer,"  asked 
the  governor,  "  that  was  here  before?" — 
"  I  am  the  same  Mary  Dyer  that  was 
here  at  the  last  General  Court." — "  You 
will  own  yourself  a  Quaker,  will  you 
not  I ' ' — * '  I  own  myself  to  be  reproachfully 
so  called." — "  Sentence  was  passed  upon 
you,"  said  the  governor,  "at  the  last  Gen- 
eral Court,  and  now  likewise.  You  must 
return  to  the  prison,  and  there  remain  till 
to-morrow  at  nine  o  'clock ;  then  thence  you 
must  go  to  the  gallows,  and  there  be  hanged 
till  you  are  dead." — "This  is  no  more," 
said  Mary  Dyer,  "than  what  thou  saidst 
before." — "But  now,"  said  the  governor, 
"it  is  to  be  executed.  Therefore,  prepare 
yourself  to-morrow  at  nine  o'clock." — "I 


86     THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

came,"  said  she,  "in  obedience  to  the  will 
of  God  at  the  last  General  Court,  desiring 
you  to  repeal  your  unrighteous  laws  of 
banishment  on  pain  of  death;  and  that 
same  is  my  work  now,  and  earnest  desire, 
although  I  told  you  that  if  you  refuse  to 
repeal  them,  the  Lord  would  send  others 
of  His  servants  to  witness  against  them." 
"Away  with  her!"  cried  the  governor. 
"Away  with  her!" 

Thus  she  had  her  will  and  offered  her- 
self,— our  New  England  Iphigeneia, — a 
sacrifice  for  the  common  good.  Even  as 
she  stood  upon  the  ladder,  they  told  her 
that  she  should  be  set  free  if  she  would  go 
home  and  stay  there.  But  she  would  ac- 
cept no  deliverance.  "Nay,"  she  said,  "I 
cannot ;  for  in  obedience  to  the  will  of  the 
Lord  God  I  came,  and  in  His  will  I  abide 
faithful  unto  death."  In  the  Friends' 
Records  of  Portsmouth,  Ehode  Island,  they 
made  this  entry:  "Mary  Dyer,  the  wife 
of  William  Dyer  of  Newport  in  Ehode  Isl- 
and: She  was  put  to  death  at  the  Town 


THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  D'f  ER     87 

of  Boston  with  ye  like  cruel  hand  as  the 
martyrs  were  in  Queen  Mary's  time,  and 
then  buried  upon  ye  31  day  of  ye  3'  mo. 
1660." 

The  persecution  of  the  Quakers  in  Mas- 
sachusetts extended  over  a  term  of  twenty- 
one  years,  beginning  with  the  deportation 
of  Ann  Austin  and  Mary  Fisher  in  1656, 
and  ending  with  the  flogging  of  Margaret 
Brewster  and  others  in  1677.  In  addition 
to  the  penalties  of  fine  and  imprisonment, 
it  presented  to  the  Christian  community 
the  spectacle  of  some  fifty  public  whip- 
pings, many  of  the  sufferers  being  women, 
in  some  instances  the  victims  being 
dragged  through  the  streets  of  towns  at 
the  tails  of  carts,  the  hangman  beating 
them  as  they  went.  Three  Quakers  had 
their  right  ears  cut  off,  four  were  hanged. 
The  result  was  the  abolition  of  the  Puri- 
tan theocracy.  Established  in  the  enthusi- 
asm of  high  ideals,  maintained  by  men  of 
conscience  in  the  fear  of  God,  excluding 
from  the  franchise  of  the  commonwealth 


88  THE  HANGING  OF  MARY  DYER 

all  who  are  not  members  of  the  church, 
it  set  its  face  toward  a  realization  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  But  it  broke  the  su- 
preme divine  law  of  brotherly  love,  and 
fell  thereby  into  the  iniquities  of  persecu- 
tion. And  it  came  to  an  end  in  consequence. 
The  death  of  Mary  Dyer,  with  other  con- 
temporary cruelties,  was  brought  to  the 
attention  of  the  King.  While  he  was  read- 
ing the  report,  the  news  arrived  of  the 
hanging  of  William  Leddra.  In  came  Ed- 
ward Burrough,  the  Quaker,  and  said  to  the 
King,  "  There  is  a  vein  of  innocent  blood 
opened  in  thy  dominions  which  if  it  be  not 
stopped,  will  over-run  all."  The  King 
said,  *  *  I  will  stop  that  vein. ' '  And  he  did. 
There  were  floggings  after  that,  but  no 
more  hangings.  Liberty  of  conscience  and 
freedom  of  honest  speech  were  no  longer 
punishable  in  Massachusetts  with  banish- 
ment on  pain  of  death.  That  was  the  su- 
preme achievement  of  the  martyrdom  of 
Mary  Dyer. 


THE  ADVENTURES  OF 
CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH 


Ill 

THE  ADVENTURES  OF 
CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH 

THE  baptismal  register  of  Chorley 
Church,  in  Lancashire,  contains  a 
leaf  which  nobody  can  read.  The  entries 
which  precede  and  which  follow  are  plain 
enough :  ink  was  good  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. But  this  blurred  leaf  presents  so  worn 
and  dim  an  aspect  that  they  have  reason  on 
their  side  who  claim  that  fingers  more 
hasty  and  tangible  than  those  of  the  hand 
of  time  have  touched  it.  It  looks  as  if  the 
records  of  1584  and  1585  had  been  inten- 
tionally rubbed  out.  It  is  a  common  guess 
that  one  of  the  names  thus  unhappily 
erased  was  that  of  Myles  Standish. 

At  all  events  the  name  is  gone,  and  with 
it  has  disappeared  the  necessary  proof  to 
establish  the  claims  of  the  Standishes  of 
America  to  the  pleasant  possessions  of  the 

91 


92  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

Standishes  of  Standish.  That  such  a  claim 
has  reasonable  foundation  appears  in 
Myles  Standish 's  will,  in  which  "I  give," 
he  says,  "unto  my  son  and  heir  apparent, 
Alexander  Standish,  all  my  lands  as  heir 
apparent  by  lawful  descent  in  Ormistick 
Bousconge,  Wrightington,  Maudsley,  New- 
burrow,  Cranston  and  in  the  Isle  of  Man, 
and  given  to  mee  as  right  heire  by  lawful 
descent,  but  surreptitiously  detained  from 
mee,  my  grandfather  being  a  second  or 
younger  brother  from  the  house  of  Stan- 
dish  of  Standish." 

The  house  of  Standish  was  of  good  an- 
tiquity, and  had  possessed  its  Lancashire 
estates  for  centuries.  The  origin  of  the 
name  is  involved  in  the  obscurity  which 
is  unfortunately  common  to  origins.  There 
is  a  rumor  that  in  the  uneffaced  pages  of 
the  Chorley  register  is  the  ancient  name 
of  Milo  Standanaught ;  Milo  being  plainly 
from  the  Latin  for  "soldier,"  and  Stand- 
anaught meaning  "  Stand-at-no  thing. " 
And  there  are  those  who  guess  that  from 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH        93 

these  sturdy  syllables  came  the  name  of 
the  Puritan  captain.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  armorial  bearings  of  the  family  are 
1 '  an  azure  shield  with  three  standishes  ar- 
gent"; and  the  word  "  standish,"  thus 
used,  is  simply  stand-dish.  In  the  diction- 
aries this  dish  is  used  for  pens  and  ink: 
Dean  Swift  speaks  of  his  silver  standish. 
But  in  the  London  Times  report  of  Queen 
Victoria's  coronation  mention  is  made  of 
standishes  upon  the  altar,  meaning  silver 
plates  or  patens.  Thus  they  appear  upon 
the  family  shield. 

Standish,  however  derived,  was  the 
name.  Thurston  de  Standish,  who  was  liv- 
ing in  1222,  is  the  eldest  recognizable  an- 
cestor; his  son  was  Ealph,  and  Ealph's 
sons,  living  in  1306,  were  Hugh  and  Jordan. 
These  two  divided  the  estates  between 
them,  and  their  families  became  respec- 
tively the  Standishes  of  Duxbury  and  the 
Standishes  of  Standish.  The  family  houses 
of  Standish  and  Duxbury  are  pictured 
in  Johnson's  "  Exploits  of  Myles  Stan- 


94  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

dish."  They  are  dignified,  large,  square 
buildings,  surrounded  by  trees  and  exten- 
sive grounds.  Standish  Hall  is  reproduced 
from  a  photograph  and  may  show  the  place 
as  it  is  at  present.  The  house  is  connected 
by  a  timbered  corridor  with  a  chapel  which 
has  a  cross  at  the  gable.  Duxbury  Hall 
is  copied  from  a  painting,  without  date; 
deer  are  grazing  on  the  lawn,  and  a  group 
of  gentlemen  on  horseback  are  standing  by 
the  porch. 

The  two  branches  of  the  family  chose 
different  sides  in  the  religious  contention 
which  presently  disturbed  the  land.  The 
Standishes  of  Duxbury  accepted  the  Prot- 
estant Beformation;  the  Standishes  of 
Standish  continued  in  the  unreformed 
religion. 

The  Catholic  Standishes  took  a  lively 
part  in  the  disturbances  of  the  time.  Henry 
Standish,  a  Franciscan  friar  and  bishop 
of  St.  Asaph,  sided  with  Queen  Katherine 
in  the  matter  of  the  divorce.  And  when 
the  contention  between  the  reformed  and 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH        95 

the  unreformed  religions  was  renewed  late 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  in  the  time  of 
James  the  Second,  the  Standishes  of  Stan- 
dish  were  enthusiastic  Jacobites.  It  was 
at  Standish  Hall  that  the  "  Lancashire 
Plot  "  was  made  for  the  King's  restoration. 
This  connection  of  the  family  with  the 
Roman  religion  has  since  given  rise  to  an 
interesting  theory  that  Myles  Standish  was 
a  Koman  Catholic.  It  would  be  pleasant 
to  have  this  theory  confirmed.  That 
Standish  was  not  a  member  of  the  Plym- 
outh church  is  commonly  asserted.  Dr. 
Jeremy  Belknap,  in  his  "American  Biogra- 
phy, ' '  says  in  so  many  words,  though  with- 
out reference  to  authority,  that  he  was 
"  not  a  member  of  their  church  ";  and  he 
presently  quotes  from  the  manuscript  of 
the  Eev.  William  Hubbard's  "  History  of 
New  England,"  "  He  had  been  bred  a  sol- 
dier in  the  Low  Countries,  and  had  never 
entered  into  the  school  of  Christ,  or  of  John 
the  Baptist."  This,  indeed,  may  mean  no 
more  than  that  the  writer  did  not  approve 


96  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

of  the  captain's  martial  activity;  for  he 
adds, ' '  or,  if  ever  he  was  there,  he  had  for- 
got his  first  lessons,  to  offer  violence 
to  no  man."  Still,  it  is  more  likely 
that  he  intended  to  make  apology  for 
Standish  on  the  ground  that  he  was 
not  a  church  member.  That  was  twenty 
years  after  Standish 's  death.  Hubbard 
was,  therefore,  a  contemporary;  and, 
though  he  lived  at  Ipswich,  he  would  not 
be  likely  to  be  mistaken  in  regard  to  an 
ecclesiastical  position  so  exceptional,  at 
that  time,  as  Standish 's. 

Accordingly,  there  appear  two  facts: 
first,  that  Standish 's  family  was  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  faith;  and,  secondly,  that 
Standish  himself  did  not  belong  to 
the  Puritan  Church.  Was  he  a  Roman 
Catholic? 

It  is  certain  that  Myles  Standish  fought 
in  the  Netherlands  on  the  Protestant  side 
in  a  war  which  was  essentially  a  war  of 
religion. 

It  is  certain  that  he  cast  in  his  lot  with 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH        97 

the  Puritan  emigrants,  and  was  ever 
trusted  and  esteemed  by  them.  They  hated 
Papists.  Bradford,  in  his  "  History  of 
Plymouth  Plantation, ' '  shows  how  they  felt 
even  about  the  Church  of  England,  how 
they  detested  "  ye  ceremonies,  and  serv- 
ise  books,  and  other  popish  and  unchristian 
stuff  e." 

It  is  certain  that  Myles  Standish's  li- 
brary, as  appears  in  the  inventory  made  at 
his  death,  was  as  Protestant  as  a  lot  of 
books  can  be.  It  was  like  the  collection  of 
an  orthodox  country  parson, — Calvin's  In- 
stitutes, Preston's  Sermons,  Burrough's 
11  Earthly-Mindedness  and  Christian  Con- 
tentment," Dod  on  the  Lord's  Supper,  a 
reply  to  Dr.  Cotton  on  Baptisms,  * '  Sparkes 
Against  Heresie,"  Ball  on  "  Faith,"  "  Na- 
ture and  Grace  in  Conflict,"  together  with 
"3  old  Bibles,"  not  one  of  them  in  the 
Douay  version.  It  is  true  that  some  of  these 
excellent  books  may  have  been  presented  to 
him  in  Leyden  by  Pastor  Eobinson,  or  in 
Plymouth  by  Elder  Brewster,  for  the  im- 


98  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

proving  of  his  mind  and  the  saving  of  his 
soul;  but  it  is  more  likely  that  he  bought 
them  himself.  That  was  what  he  liked  to 
read.  There  is  evidence  on  those  shelves  of 
a  serious  disposition  and  a  religious  spirit, 
but  there  is  no  smallest  trace  of  any  di- 
vergence from  the  opinions  common  in 
Plymouth.  Not  one  of  these  books  could 
have  stood  consistently  upon  a  Eoman 
Catholic  shelf. 

We  may  reasonably  infer  from  such 
facts  as  these  that  Myles  Standish,  who  was 
by  family  a  Eoman  Catholic,  by  baptism, 
in  Chorley  Church,  an  Episcopalian,  and 
by  association  a  Puritan,  was  a  person  of 
independent  mind  who  did  not  further  com- 
mit himself.  That  he  was  a  Eoman  Cath- 
olic, either  in  practice  or  opinion,  during 
his  life  in  Plymouth,  there  is  not  the  least 
ground  for  belief. 

The  life  of  Standish  is  divided  into  two 
almost  exactly  equal  portions  by  the  sail- 
ing of  the  Mayflower.  Born,  so  near  as  we 
can  tell,  in  1584,  he  died  in  1656.  The  year 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH        99 

1620  is  midway  between  these  dates  pre- 
cisely. Of  the  first  part  of  his  career 
scarce  anything  is  known.  Morton,  in  his 
"  New  England's  Memorial,"  tells  us  all 
that  he  knows  about  it  in  half  a  sentence. 
11  In  his  younger  time,"  he  says,  "  he  went 
over  into  the  Low  Countries,  and  was  a 
soldier  there,  and  came  acquainted  with 
the  church  at  Leyden." 

The  lad  became  a  soldier,  naturally.  The 
surreptitious  detaining  of  his  inheritance 
indicates  family  dissensions,  and  it  may 
have  been  the  discomfort  or  compulsion  of 
them  which  drove  him  from  home.  He  was 
probably  glad  to  go.  It  was  a  day  of  ad- 
venture. Men  who  had  no  cause  for  which 
to  fight  at  home  went  abroad  seeking  occu- 
pation for  their  swords.  It  was  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  who  said,  ' '  Whenever  you  hear  of 
a  good  war,  go  to  it  ";  and  he  had  himself 
followed  his  own  advice,  going  into  the 
Netherlands  for  the  joy  of  the  fray.  Young 
Standish's  mind  would  respond  to  this 
gallant  counsel:  to  the  wars  he  went. 


100  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

Spain  and  Holland  were  still  fighting. 
In  1584,  the  year  of  Myles's  birth,  William 
the  Silent  was  assassinated.  In  1604,  Eliz- 
abeth having  died,  and  James  having  suc- 
ceeded her  upon  the  throne  of  England, 
the  English  forces  which  had  been  helping 
Holland  were  withdrawn.  As  Standish 
was  at  that  time  but  twenty  years  of  age,  it 
is  plain  that  he  had  not  seen  any  extended 
service.  The  most  notable  military  event  of 
that  time  was  the  siege  of  Ostend, 
which  came  to  an  end  in  that  year.  It  is 
a  fair  guess  that  the  young  soldier  had  a 
part  in  that  foolish  tragedy.  Of  his  "  three 
muskets,  four  carbines,  two  small  guns, 
one  fowling  piece,  a  sword,  a  cutlass  and 
three  belts,"  some,  it  is  likely,  were  used 
in  this  campaign,  and  were  tried  against 
the  Spaniards  before  they  were  directed 
against  the  Indians.  It  was  probably 
at  this  time,  also,  that  he  purchased 
his  copies  of  "  Cesar's  Commentarys" 
and  "  Bariff's  Artillery,"  which  he  could 
hardly  have  desired  for  counsel  in  his 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       101 

dealings  with  the  Massachusetts  or  the 
Narragansetts. 

Two  swords  are  still  shown,  one  in  Bos- 
ton and  the  other  in  Plymouth,  which  are 
said  to  have  belonged  to  him.  The  Plym- 
outh sword,  in  Pilgrim  Hall,  has  an 
Arabic  inscription  on  its  blade,  which  car- 
ries its  history  out  of  the  bounds  of  knowl- 
edge into  the  camps  of  that  Moslem  enemy 
who,  even  in  Standish 's  time,  was  men- 
acing and  molesting  Europe.  It  may  easily 
have  belonged  to  some  pirate  Turk,  taken 
in  his  ship  in  the  English  Channel,  and 
have  been  sold  by  its  captor.  Myles  prob- 
ably bought  it  at  second-hand.  Unlike  his 
predecessor,  Captain  John  Smith,  he  had 
no  personal  encounters  with  men  whose 
speech  was  Arabic. 

The  Boston  sword,  which  is  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  is  supposed  by  Mr.  Winsor  to  be 
the  one  which  Alexander  Standish  inher- 
ited, and  was  handed  down  to  Alexander's 
grandson,  John  Standish,  of  Plymouth, 


102  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

from  whom  it  was  borrowed  on  a  training- 
day  by  a  careless  neighbor  who  never  car- 
ried it  back.  In  1849,  Mr.  Winsor  was  in- 
formed by  Mr.  Moses  Standish,  of  Boston, 
that  he  had  seen  in  the  house  of  this  Cap- 
tain John  Standish  a  coat  of  mail  which 
had  belonged  to  his  great-grandfather. 
"  It  was  a  cloth  garment,  being  thickly  in- 
terwoven with  a  metallic  wire,so  as  to  make 
it  extremely  durable,  and  scarcely  penetra- 
ble. The  suit  was  complete,  including  a 
helmet  and  breastplate." 

In  1604,  when  England  and  Spain  pro- 
fessed to  be  friends,  it  seemed  as  if  there 
would  be  no  further  use  for  these  weapons, 
offensive  or  defensive.  In  1609,  however, 
two  events  took  place  which  determined 
where  young  Standish 's  taste  for  war 
should  find  gratification.  One  was  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  general  peace.  In  the 
West  of  Europe,  though  contending  ar- 
mies, Catholic  and  Protestant,  made  a  truce 
of  twelve  years,  in  the  East  of  Europe, 
other  contending  armies,  Christian  and 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       103 

Moslem,  agreed  to  fight  no  more  for  almost 
twice  that  length  of  time.  Thus  Standish's 
profession  offered  him  no  future  in  Eu- 
rope ;  no  princes  would  buy  his  sword.  The 
other  event  was  the  removal  from  Amster- 
dam to  Leyden  of  a  little  group  of  English 
Puritan  refugees.  Thus,  in  this  year  or 
later,  Standish  came  into  acquaintance 
with  Eobinson  and  Brewster,  and  with 
Carver  and  Bradford  and  Winslow.  When 
the  Puritans  began  presently  to  look  across 
the  sea,  he  naturally  bethought  himself  of 
Walter  Ealeigh  and  Lyon  Gardner  and 
John  Smith  and  Ferdinando  Gorges,  com- 
panions in  arms  with  him,  who,  being  in 
his  condition,  without  employment,  had 
found  occupation  and  adventure  in  the 
new  world.  He  cast  in  his  lot  with  the 
emigrating  congregation. 

The  Puritans  had,  indeed,  found  Leyden 
' '  a  fair  and  bewtif ul  citie,  and  of  a  sweete 
situation,"  and  had  especially  appreciated 
the  advantages  of  living  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  its  university.  They  knew  the  per- 


104  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

ils  of  an  untried  climate.  ' '  For  that  they 
should  be  liable,"  they  said,  "  to  famine, 
and  nakedness,  and  ye  want,  in  a  manner, 
of  all  things.  The  change  of  aire,  diate, 
and  drinking  of  water  would  infecte  their 
bodies  with  sore  sickness  and  greevous  dis- 
eases. And  also  those  which  should  escape 
or  overcome  these  difficulties,  should  yett  be 
in  continuall  danger  of  ye  salvage  people, 
who  are  cruel,  barberous  and  most  trech- 
erous,  being  most  furious  in  their  rage  and 
merciles  where  they  overcome:  nor  being 
content  only  to  kill  and  take  away  life,  but 
delight  to  tormente  men  in  ye  most  bloodie 
manner  that  may  be;  fleeing  some  alive 
with  ye  shells  of  fishes,  cutting  of  ye  mem- 
bers and  joyntes  of  others  peesmeale,  and, 
broiling  on  ye  coles,  eate  ye  collops  of  their 
flesh  in  their  sight  whilst  they  live:  with 
other  cruelties  horrible  to  be  related." 

This  was  not  a  cheerful  prospect.  But 
the  truce  between  Holland  and  Spain  was 
nearly  over, — the  twelve  years  ending  in 
1621, — and  the  Indians,  they  may  well  have 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       105 

thought,  could  not  be  much  worse  than  the 
Spaniards.  Other  reasons,  also,  impelled 
them.  They  desired  to  have  a  country  of 
their  own,  where  they  might  bring  up  their 
children  to  be  religious  English  folk.  They 
determined  to  seek  an  abiding  place  in  the 
wild  lands  across  the  sea. 

In  the  meantime,  Myles  Standish  had 
been  getting  married.  Somewhere, — tradi- 
tion says,  in  the  Isle  of  Man, — he  had  found 
a  young  person  named  Rose,  who  was  will- 
ing, under  the  safe  covert  of  his  protec- 
tion, to  brave  the  possible  horrors  of  New 
England.  Standish  was  now  thirty-six 
years  old,  being  arrived  at  the  middle  year 
of  his  life.  Longfellow  tells  how  he 
looked — 


"  Short  of  stature  he  was,  but  strongly  built  and 

athletic, 
Broad  in  the  shoulders,  deep-chested,  with  muscles 

and  sinews  of  iron ; 
Brown  as  a  nut  was  his  face,  but  his  russet  beard 

was  already 
Flaked  with  patches  of  snow,  as  hedges  sometimes 

in  November." 


106  THE  ADVENTUEES  OF 

That  is  as  near  as  we  can  come  to  it.  He 
was  certainly  short  of  stature.  Master 
Morton,  of  Merrymount,  in  his  * '  New  Eng- 
land Canaan,"  wrote  satirical  descriptions 
of  the  colonists,  and  called  Captain  Stan- 
dish,  "  Captaine  Shrimpe."  "  Had  we  been 
at  home  in  our  full  number,"  he  says,  re- 
counting how  Standish  invaded  and  ar- 
rested the  mischievous  household,  we 
"  would  have  given  Captaine  Shrimpe  (a 
quondam  Drummer)  such  a  welcome  as 
would  have  made  him  wish  for  a  Drumme 
as  bigg  as  Diogenes'  tubb,  that  he  might 
have  crept  into  it  out  of  sight."  So,  too, 
the  Indian  Pecksuot  told  him,  "  Though 
he  were  a  great  Captain,  yet  he  was  but  a 
little  Man."  William  Hubbard,  also,  al- 
ready quoted,  said,  "  A  little  chimney  is 
soon  fired :  so  was  the  Plymouth  captain,  a 
man  of  very  little  stature,  yet  of  a  very  hot 
and  hasty  temper." 

There  is  no  authentic  portrait  of  Stan- 
dish,  though  the  picture  in  the  ' '  Standishes 
of  America  ' '  suits  the  part  well.  It  shows 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       107 

a  sturdy  person,  in  the  stiff  ruff  of  the  pe- 
riod, with  full  black  beard,  and  a  look  of 
stout  determination  in  his  eyes.  But  the 
compiler  tells  us  that  nothing  is  definitely 
known  about  this  portrait  prior  to  the  year 
1812.  It  is  true  that  Standish  was  in  Eng- 
land in  the  year  1625,  when  the  picture  is 
dated.  But  the  times  were  not  such  as  to 
suggest  the  painting  of  portraits :  money 
was  uncommonly  scarce,  and  London  had 
the  plague.  The  Pilgrims  did  not  sit  for 
their  pictures.  The  walls  of  their  houses 
did  not  present  suitable  backgrounds  for 
the  hanging  of  paintings  in  oil. 

' '  Wednesday,  the  sixth  of  September, 
the  wind  coming  East  North  East,  a  fine 
small  gale,  we  loosed  from  Plymouth  [the 
English  Plymouth],  having  been  kindly 
entertained  and  courteously  used  by  divers 
friends  there  dwelling :  and  after  many  dif- 
ficulties in  boisterous  storms,  at  length,  by 
God's  Providence,  upon  the  9th  of  Novem- 
ber following,  by  break  of  day,  we  espied 
land ;  which  we  deemed  to  be  Cape  Cod,  and 


108  THE  ADVENTURES  OP 

so  afterward  it  proved. "  The  year  was 
1620,  and  the  dates,  being  "  old  style," 
need  to  be  increased  by  ten  to  bring 
them  into  proper  position  in  our  present 
calendar. 

Two  days  later,  after  perilous  en- 
counters with  "  dangerous  shoals  and 
roaring  breakers  "  in  a  vain  attempt  to 
make  what  is  now  the  harbor  of  New  York, 
they  dropped  anchor  near  the  end  of  Long 
Point  and  not  far  from  the  present  village 
of  Provincetown.  They  found  themselves 
in  a  circling  bay  ' '  compassed  about  to  the 
very  sea  with  oaks,  pines,  juniper,  sassa- 
fras, and  other  sweet  wood,"  and  so  capa- 
cious that  therein  "  a  thousand  sail  of 
ships  may  safely  ride."  The  water,  how- 
ever, was  so  shallow  that  they  could  not 
come  near  the  shore  by  "  three-quarters 
of  an  English  mile."  They  had  to  wade 
"  a  bow-shot  or  two  "  in  "  going  aland  "; 
thus  getting  such  coughs  and  colds  as 
made  them  ill-prepared  for  the  rigors 
which  awaited  them. 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       109 

In  the  cabin  of  the  May-flower,  lying  thus 
at  Provincetown,  they  drew  up  a  notable 
compact  in  which  they  agreed  to  combine 
themselves  together  into  a  civil  body  poli- 
tic ;  and  by  virtue  thereof  to  make  laws  to 
which  they  promised  all  due  submission 
and  obedience.  The  sixth  name  signed  to 
this  document  was  that  of  Captain  Myles 
Standish. 

Thus  the  new  life  began,  under  Novem- 
ber skies.  "  Being  thus  passed  ye  vast 
ocean,"  writes  Bradford,  in  his  history, 
"  they  had  now  no  friends  to  wellcome 
them,  nor  inns  to  entertaine  or  refresh 
their  weatherbeaten  bodies,  no  houses  or 
much  less  townes,  to  repaire  too,  to 
seek  for  succore.  .  .  .  And  for  the  season, 
it  was  winter,  and  they  that  know  ye  win- 
ters of  that  countrie  know  them  to  be  sharp 
and  violent,  and  subject  to  cruell  and 
feirce  storms,  dangerous  to  travill  to 
known  places,  much  more  to  such  an 
unknown  coast." 

The  first  task  was  exploration,  and  the 


110  THE  ADVENTURES  OP 

first  mention  of  Standish  is  as  the  leader 
of  an  expedition.  i  l  And  so  with  cautions, 
directions  and  instructions,  sixteen  men 
were  sent  out,  with  every  man  his  musket, 
sword  and  corselet,  under  the  conduct  of 
Captain  Myles  Standish/'  They  ordered 
themselves  in  "a  Single  File  "  and 
marched  for  a  mile  by  the  sea,  without 
meeting  with  an  adventure,  when,  at  last, 
they  saw  five  or  six  persons  with  a  dog 
coming  towards  them,  who,  when  they  es- 
pied this  army  of  invasion,  ran  into  the 
woods,  whistling  the  dog  after  them.  Stan- 
dish  and  his  men  followed  these  citizens, 
but  were  not  able  to  overtake  them,  for 
they  "  ran  away  with  might  and  main." 
Thus  they  went  for  ten  miles,  following 
their  footprints.  Then  it  grew  dark,  and 
they  built  a  camp-fire,  and  setting  a  guard, 
bestowed  themselves  for  the  night.  The 
next  day  they  went  on  through  the  woods 
making  their  way  through  boughs  and 
bushes  which,  as  they  reported,  tore  their 
very  armor  in  pieces.  About  ten  in  the 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       111 

morning,  being  then  in  what  is  now  Truro, 
they  found  a  spring,  "  of  which,"  they 
said,  "  we  were  heartily  glad,  and  sot  us 
down  and  drank  our  first  New  England 
water  with  as  much  delight  as  ever  we 
drank  drink  in  all  our  lives."  That  day 
they  found  some  planks  laid  together, 
where  a  house  had  been,  and  a  ship's  ket- 
tle, "  brought  out  of  Europe,"  and  nearby 
in  sand-heaps  a  store  of  corn,  "  some  yel- 
low, and  some  red,  and  some  mixed  with 
blue;  which  was  a  very  goodly  sight."  Of 
this  they  helped  themselves,  filling  the  ket- 
tle and  their  pockets.  So  they  made  their 
way  back  to  the  ship,  with  some  difficulty, 
getting  lost  in  the  woods,  and  seemed  to 
their  companions  as  fairly  laden  as  the 
men  from  Eshcol.  Eight  months  after, 
they  met  the  owners  of  this  corn  and  paid 
them  for  it.  This  find  of  corn  they  called 
the  First  Discovery. 

On  Wednesday,  the  6th  (16th)  of  De- 
cember, another  exploring  expedition,  con- 
sisting of  ten  men  and  led,  as  before,  by 


112  THE  ADVENTURES  OP 

Captain  Standish,  started  in  search  of  a 
proper  place  for  the  settlement.  The 
weather  was  very  cold,  the  water  freezing 
on  their  clothes  and  making  them  "  like 
coats  of  iron."  They  went  by  water,  in 
the  shallop,  landing  now  and  then  and 
making  expeditions  into  the  country.  In 
the  middle  of  the  second  night,  as  they  lay 
on  the  shore  by  their  fire,  they  heard  "  a 
great  and  hideous  cry,"  and  shot  off  a 
couple  of  muskets,  at  which  the  noise 
ceased,  and  they  judged  it  had  been  made 
by  wolves  or  foxes.  But  about  five  o  'clock 
the  next  morning,  having  had  prayers  and 
preparing  breakfast,  the  cry  sounded 
again,  and  one  of  the  company  came  run- 
ning in,  shouting,  "  They  are  men!  In- 
dians! Indians!"  And  the  sentinel  was 
followed  by  a  flight  of  arrows.  The  arms 
had  already  been  carried  to  the  boat,  but 
Standish  had  a  snap-lance  ready — a  gun 
with  a  flint  lock — and  he  made  a  shot,  and 
presently  the  others  were  ready;  the  In- 
dians meanwhile  keeping  up  their  dreadful 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       113 

cry,  "Woach!"  they  screamed,  "  Woach! 
Ha !  Ha !  Hach !  Woach ! ' ' — sounding  not 
unlike  a  college  yell.  Finally  their  leader 
*  *  gave  an  extraordinary  cry  and  away  they 
went  all."  None  of  the  Englishmen  had 
been  hit  by  the  discharge  of  arrows,  nor 
do  they  record  having  wounded  any  Indian. 
They  followed  the  retreating  savages  a 
little  space,  and  then  shouted ' '  all  together, 
two  several  times ;  and  shot  off  a  couple  of 
muskets;  and  so  returned.  This  we  did 
that  they  might  see  that  we  were  not  afraid 
of  them  nor  discouraged."  Thus  ended 
the  First  Encounter. 

Then,  giving  God  thanks,  they  set  sail 
again,  looking  for  a  harbor  to  which  the 
ship's  pilot  had  directed  them;  he  had  been 
there  once,  he  said,  and  the  savages  had 
stolen  his  harpoon;  he  called  it  Thievish 
Harbor.  Now  it  began  to  snow  and  rain 
and  blow,  and  the  sea  was  very  rough.  The 
rudder  broke;  the  mast  was  split  in  three 
pieces.  At  last,  after  a  day  of  peril,  they 
"  fell  upon  a  place  of  sandy  ground  "  on 


114  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

the  shore  of  a  small  island.  There  they 
stayed  till  morning,  and  the  next  day,  be- 
ing Sunday,  they  said  their  prayers  and 
sang  their  hymns,  on  Clark's  Island,  as  we 
call  it.  "  On  Monday  they  sounded  ye 
harbor,  and  f ounde  it  fitt  for  shipping ;  and 
marched  into  ye  land  &  found  diverse  corn- 
fields &  little  running  brooks,  a  place  (as 
they  supposed)  fitt  for  situation;  at  least 
it  was  ye  best  they  could  find;  and  ye 
season  and  their  present  necessities,  made 
them  glad  to  accepte  of  it.  So  they  returned 
to  their  shipp  again  with  this  news  to 
ye  rest  of  their  people,  which  did  much 
comforte  their  harts." 

Thus  is  the  Landing  recorded,  without 
adjective  or  exclamation.  The  date  was 
December  11,  or,  by  our  reckoning,  the 
21st,  piously  kept  as  "  Forefathers'  Day." 
No  rock  is  mentioned,  but  as  there  is  no 
other  rock  in  the  immediate  neighborhood 
of  their  getting  ashore,  there  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  that  they  set  their  feet  on  the 
boulder  of  tradition.  It  has  been  debated 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      115 

whether  John  Alden  or  Mary  Chilton  was 
the  first  to  land ;  but  that  event  was  later, 
when  the  Mayflower  followed  the  shallop's 
course  into  Plymouth  Bay.  Let  us  hazard 
the  conjecture  that  Myles  Standish,  being 
the  leader  of  this  expedition,  was  himself 
the  first  to  stand  on  "  the  threshold  of 
the  United  States." 

The  First  Encounter  had  made  the  pil- 
grims thankful  that  they  had  a  military 
man  among  them.  They  were  now  expectant 
of  an  Indian  attack.  Among  their  domes- 
tic and  religious  preparations  for  the  win- 
ter they  did  not  neglect  those  important 
and,  as  they  thought,  necessary  precau- 
tions for  which  Standish  was  responsible. 
After  two  months  of  anxiety,  during  which 
they  sometimes  saw  great  smokes  of  Indian 
fires,  but  never  an  Indian,  it  happened  at 
the  end  of  February,  that ' '  Captain  Myles 
Standish  and  Francis  Cooke,  being  at  work 
in  the  woods,  coming  home  left  their  tools 
behind  them,  but  before  they  returned 
they  were  taken  away  by  the  savages." 


116  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

The  next  day,  "  in  the  morning,"  says  the 
record  in  Mourt's  " Relation,"  "we  called 
a  meeting  for  the  establishment  of  military 
orders  among  ourselves;  and  we  chose 
Myles  Standish  our  captain,  and  gave  him 
authority  of  command  in  affairs.  And  as 
we  were  in  consultation  hereabouts,  two 
savages  presented  themselves  upon  the  top 
of  a  hill,  over  against  our  plantation,  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  and  less,  and  made 
signs  unto  us  to  come  unto  them :  we  like- 
wise made  signs  unto  them  to  come  unto 
us.  Whereupon  we  armed  ourselves 
and  made  ready,  and  sent  two  over  the 
brook  towards  them,  to-wit,  Captain  Stan- 
dish  and  Stevens  Hopkins,  who  went  to- 
wards them.  Only  one  of  them  had  a  mus- 
ket, which  they  laid  down  on  the  ground  in 
their  sight,  in  sign  of  peace  and  to  parley 
with  them.  But  the  savages  would  not 
tarry  their  coming.  A  noise  of  a  great 
many  more  was  heard  behind  the  hill ;  but 
no  more  came  in  sight.  This  led  us  to 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      117 

plant  our  great  ordnance  in  places  most 
convenient." 

Meanwhile,  in  January  and  February,  of 
the  company  of  settlers  half  had  died. 
' '  In  ye  depth  of  winter,  and  wanting  houses 
and  other  comforts,  being  infected  with  ye 
scurvie  and  other  diseases,  which  their  long 
voyage  and  their  inacomodate  condition 
had  brought  upon  them,"  they  died, 
"  sometimes  2  or  3  of  a  day."  On  the  5th 
of  February,  Eose  Standish  died.  * '  Scarce 
fifty  remained,"  says  Bradford,  "  and  of 
these  in  ye  time  of  most  distress  ther  was 
but  6.  or  7.  sound  persons,  who,  to  their 
great  comendations  be  it  spoken,  spared  no 
pains,  night  nor  day,  but  with  abundance 
of  toyle  and  hazard  of  their  own  health, 
fetched  the  wood,  made  them  fires,  dressed 
them  meat,  made  their  beds,  washed  their 
lothsome  cloths — and  all  this  willingly  and 
cheerfully,  without  any  grudging  in  the 
least,  shewing  herein  their  true  love  unto 
their  friends  and  brethren."  "  Two  of 


118  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

these  7.  were  Mr.  William  Brewster,  their 
reverend  Elder,  and  Myles  Standish,  ther 
Captain  and  Military  Commander.'' 

In  this  forlorn  condition  was  the  settle- 
ment, many  dead  and  most  of  the  others 
sick,  the  sea  before  them,  and  the  menacing 
forest  behind,  when,  on  the  Friday  morning 
of  a  "  fair,  warm  day  "  in  March,  there 
came  in  boldly  "  all  alone  and  along  the 
houses,"  a  naked  savage,  crying,  "  Wel- 
come ! ' '  Samoset  was  himself  but  a  visitor 
in  these  parts,  being  from  Maine,  where 
he  had  learned  some  English  from  the  fish- 
ermen ;  he  was  able,  however,  to  give  much 
information.  He  explained  the  hostility 
shown  to  Standish  in  the  First  Encounter 
by  the  fact  that  Captain  Hunt,  an  English 
shipmaster,  had  stolen  twenty- seven  men 
from  those  shores  and  carried  them  to 
Spain  to  sell  as  slaves.  He  said  that  one  of 
these  captives,  named  Squanto,  had  got 
to  England,  where  he  had  lived  in  London 
for  some  years  with  a  merchant  in  Corn- 
hill,  and  had  himself  made  his  way  home. 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      119 

And  he  told  the  story  of  the  Great  Plague. 
Standish  learned  that  they  who  had  been 
feared  as  enemies,  against  whom  he  had 
established  on  the  hill  his  Minion  and  his 
Saker,  and  his  Bases — stout  cannon  all — 
were  themselves  vanquished,  broken,  and 
almost  exterminated  by  pestilence.  Pres- 
ently Samoset  brought  Squanto,  and  Samo- 
set  and  Squanto  procured  a  conference  be- 
tween the  pilgrims  and  Massasoit,  their 
nearest  neighbor. 

Massasoit  had  prudently  prepared  him- 
self for  this  interview  by  getting  ' '  all  the 
Powachs  of  ye  cuntrie,  for  3.  days  to- 
gether, in  a  horid  and  divellish  maner  to 
curse  and  execrate  them  with  their  cun- 
jurations,  which  assambly  and  service  they 
held  in  a  dark  and  dismall  swampe."  He 
now  came  forward,  Captain  Standish  and 
Master  Allerton  meeting  him  at  the  brook 
with  half-a-dozen  musketeers.  He  was  con- 
ducted to  a  barn  then  in  building,  where 
were  placed  a  green  rug  and  three  or 
four  cushions.  The  Indian  king  and  the 


120  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

Puritan  governor  kissed  each  other's 
hands.  Then  "  the  governor  called  for 
some  strong  water  and  drunk  to  him,  and 
he  drunk  a  great  draught,  that  made  him 
sweat  all  the  tune  after."  So  they  made  a 
treaty  of  peace,  assuring  Massasoit  that  so 
long  as  he  kept  it ' '  King  James  would  es- 
teem of  him  as  his  friend  and  ally. ' '  The 
next  day  Standish  and  Allerton  ' '  ventur- 
ously "  returned  the  Indians'  visit,  and 
were  regaled  with  groundnuts  and  tobacco. 
In  spite  of  this  polite  beginning,  the  Pil- 
grims never  got  on  well  with  the  Indians. 
The  contrast,  in  this  particular,  between 
the  two  colonies  founded  by  religious  per- 
sons and  for  religious  purposes, — Plym- 
outh and  Pennsylvania, — is  very  marked. 
William  Penn  lands  upon  the  site  of  Phila- 
delphia and  finds  a  company  of  Indians. 
They  receive  him  cheerfully,  give  him  food, 
and  entertain  him  with  games,  skipping 
and  jumping.  Penn  skips  and  jumps  with 
them,  and  they  are  all  fraternally  merry 
together.  Myles  Standish  lands  on  Cape 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      121 

Cod,  forms  his  men  in  single  file,  all  in 
armor  and  carrying  guns,  and  presently 
the  Indians  raise  a  great  cry  and  come 
upon  them  with  arrows.  Penn  had  no  gun. 
The  only  man  harmed  by  the  Indians  of 
Pennsylvania  during  a  long  course  of  years 
was  one  who  owned  a  gun.  The  Pilgrims 
came  out  with  a  full  equipment,  not  only 
of  muskets,  but  of  cannon.  This  was  prob- 
ably due  to  Standish's  counsel;  he  looked 
after  the  munitions  of  war.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  if  Standish  had  not  been  of 
the  company,  and  the  settlers  had  come 
as  peaceable  and  friendly  folk,  they  might 
have  established  the  same  relations  with 
their  savage  neighbors  as  prevailed  in 
Pennsylvania. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  appears  that  a  hos- 
tile feeling  had  preceded  the  settlement 
of  Plymouth.  The  Indians  of  those  parts 
had  chiefly  learned  to  esteem  white  men  as 
enemies.  They  had  a  tradition  that  the 
great  plague  came  from  a  Frenchman's 
curse.  They  remembered  Hunt,  the  kid- 


122  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

napper.  It  is  likely  that  had  it  not  been 
for  Captain  Standish,  the  Pilgrims,  land- 
ing under  such  conditions,  among  Indians 
of  a  more  savage  temper  than  those  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  justly  enraged,  would 
have  been  summarily  cut  off.  As  it  was, 
they  had  several  narrow  escapes.  So  that 
it  may  fairly  be  said  that  Standish  saved 
the  colony.  Without  him,  it  might  have 
met  the  fate  of  other,  worse  defended 
settlements. 

The  Plymouth  people  had  now  three  val- 
uable Indian  friends:  Massasoit,  the 
sachem;  Squanto,  the  interpreter;  and 
Hobamack,  one  of  Massasoit 's  warriors,  a 
man  of  might.  They  cast  in  their  lot  with 
the  white  men.  They  were  very  jealous 
the  one  of  another;  and  Squanto,  by  a 
childish  trick,  which  was  meant  to  show 
that  he  was  the  best  friend  of  the  white 
man,  came  near  to  getting  the  settlers  into 
serious  trouble  with  Massasoit.  But  they 
were  faithful  friends,  both  of  them,  and 
even  their  jealousy  was  turned  to  account 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      123 

by  taking  Squanto  into  Governor  Brad- 
ford's house,  and  Hobamack  into  Captain 
Standish 's,  at  which  convenient  distance 
they  competed  which  should  do  the  colony 
most  good.  Squanto  taught  the  settlers 
how  to  fish  and  plant,  and  served  as  guide 
and  adviser.  He  materially  assisted  Stan- 
dish's  defensive  measures  by  informing 
the  Indians  that  the  English  had  the  plague 
buried  in  a  pot  under  the  ground,  whence 
they  were  likely  to  bring  it  out  on  the  least 
provocation. 

In  August,  1621,  Corbitant,  one  of  the 
neighbors  of  Massasoit,  having  refused  to 
sign  the  treaty  of  peace,  seized  Squanto, 
saying  that  now  the  English  had  lost  their 
tongue.  Standish  felt  that  hesitation,  or 
even  forbearance,  would  now  be  fatal. 
Straight  he  marched  with  fourteen  men 
into  Corbitant 's  town,  beset  the  chief's 
house,  and  without  serious  bloodshed 
brought  back  the  interpreter  in  safety. 

In  September,  with  nine  men  of  Plym- 
outh, and  Squanto  for  pilot,  Standish 


124  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

sailed  up  into  Boston  Bay.  They  spent  a 
night  in  the  open  boat  in  the  lee  of  Thomp- 
son's Island,  and  in  the  morning  landed  on 
the  peninsula,  whose  name  of  Squantuin 
preserves  the  memory  of  their  friend.  The 
event  is  commemorated  by  a  monument 
bearing  the  inscription, 

Captain  Myles  Standish 

with  his  men,  guided  by  the 

Indian  Squanto,  landed  here 

September  30,  1621. 

Here  they  found  a  pile  of  lobsters,  freshly 
caught,  on  which  they  made  their  breakfast, 
paying  for  them,  according  to  their  honest 
custom,  when  they  met  the  owners.  Pres- 
ently they  found  the  "  governor,"  named 
Obbatinewat,  who  lived,  as  they  expressed 
it,  "  in  the  bottom  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay. ' '  Obbatinewat,  who  was  much  afraid 
of  his  visitors,  told  them  how  he  lived  in 
terror,  not  only  of  the  Tarratines,  a  sav- 
age people  dwelling  to  the  north,  but  of 
the  squaw  sachem,  a  lady  of  the  immediate 
neighborhood,  who  was  continually  attack- 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      125 

ing  him.  The  Pilgrims  looked  about  the 
country,  crossing  over  to  what  is  now 
Charlestown,  and  marching  inland  to  what 
is  now  Medford  and  "Winchester.  Every 
camp  was  abandoned  upon  their  approach. 
All  the  warriors  hid  themselves  in  the 
woods.  The  great  plague  had  not  only 
broken  their  strength,  but  had  destroyed 
their  nerve :  they  had  no  spirit  left.  The 
visitors  found  many  squaws,  but  missed  the 
Massachusetts  Queen.  They  came  away 
with  two  impressions  of  Boston:  first, 
that  it  was  inhabited  mainly  by  women; 
and,  secondly,  that  it  was  the  most  beauti- 
ful place  they  had  found  in  all  their 
travels.  So  they  returned  to  Plymouth, 
with  a  fair  wind  and  a  light  moon. 

In  December,  the  Narragansetts,  of 
Rhode  Island,  the  most  formidable  of  their- 
neighbors,  sent  a  messenger  with  a  bundle 
of  arrows  wrapped  in  a  rattlesnake's  skin. 
Standish  detained  the  messenger  until  they 
should  learn  what  these  symbols  meant. 
When  it  was  found  that  they  threatened 


126  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

war,  the  men  of  Plymouth  stuffed  the  skin 
with  powder  and  shot,  and  returned  polite 
regrets  to  the  Narragansetts  that  the  Eng- 
lish had  no  suitable  boats  in  which  to  make 
them  a  visit,  adding  that  if  the  Narragan- 
setts cared  to  come  and  make  the  first  call, 
themselves  they  might  be  sure  of  a  warm 
reception.  The  Narragansetts  sent  back 
the  powder  and  shot,  and  did  not  come. 
But  the  Pilgrims,  knowing  how  much 
stouter  their  defiance  was  than  their  de- 
fence, set  a  strong  line  of  palings  about  the 
settlement,  with  gates  to  lock  at  night; 
and  Captain  Standish  divided  the  men  into 
four  companies,  and  summoned  a  * '  general 
muster.'1 

The  most  serious  peril  came,  however, 
from  another  direction.  In  the  summer  of 
1622,  Master  Weston,  a  money-making  cit- 
izen of  London,  who  had  been  concerned  in 
the  sailing  of  the  Mayflower,  established  a 
colony  at  Wessagusset,  near  the  present 
Weymouth.  It  was  a  trading  venture,  and 
the  colonists  were  most  of  them  "  rude 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      127 

fellows,"  as  Western,  himself  called  them; 
"  stout  knaves,"  was  the  name  which 
Master  Morton  called  them,  being  an 
associate  with  them. 

Food  was  very  scarce  both  at  Wessagus- 
set  and  at  Plymouth ;  and  this  scarcity  the 
new  colonists  increased  by  foolishly  paying 
the  Indians  as  much  for  a  quart  of  corn  as 
the  Plymouth  people  were  wont  to  pay  for 
a  skin  of  beaver.  The  two  settlements 
sent  out  a  joint  expedition  that  autumn  in 
search  of  food;  Standish  being  in  com- 
mand, and  Squanto  acting  as  interpreter. 
The  weather  was  very  bad,  and  the  boat 
was  several  times  forced  back  into  port. 
Standish  fell  sick  of  a  fever,  and  gave  up 
the  command  to  Bradford.  Presently,  at 
Chatham,  on  the  back  side  of  Cape  Cod, 
Squanto  was  suddenly  taken  sick  and  died. 
At  last,  having  secured  some  corn,  Brad- 
ford and  his  party  left  the  Wessagusset 
people  to  bring  the  food  to  port,  and  walked 
home  fifty  miles,  preferring  that  to  the 
company  of  their  neighbors.  Even  thus, 


128  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

the  supply  was  not  sufficient,  and  there  was 
hunger  in  both  colonies. 

Under  these  hard  circumstances,  the  men 
of  the  new  colony  so  conducted  themselves 
as  to  cause  the  Indians  to  lose  both  fear 
and  respect  of  them.  In  their  straits,  they 
sold  the  Indians  their  clothes  and  bed-cov- 
erings. "  Others  (so  base  were  they)  be- 
came servants  to  the  Indeans;  and  would 
cutt  their  woode  &  fetch  them  water  for  a 
cap  full  of  corne ;  others  fell  to  plaine  steal- 
ing, both  night  and  day,  from  ye  Indeans, 
of  which  they  greevously  complained. " 
Thus  the  Indians  began  not  only  to  hate 
but  to  despise  them.  They  daily  insulted 
the  planters.  "  Yea,  in  ye  end,"  says 
Bradford,  "  they  were  faine  to  hang  one 
of  their  men,  whom  they  could  not  reclaime 
from  stealing,  to  give  ye  Indeans  con- 
tente. ' '  Master  Morton,  in  his  ' '  New  Eng- 
lish Canaan, "  says  that  they  put  the  stout 
thief's  clothes  upon  another  of  their  com- 
pany who  was  sick  and  not  likely  to  live, 
and  hanged  the  sick  man  in  the  well  man's 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       129 

place.    It  is  the  story  which  Butler  tells  in 
"Hudibras": 

"  Our  Brethren  of  New  England  use 
Choice  Malefactors  to  excuse, 
And  hang  the  Guiltless  in  their  stead, 
Of  whom  the  Churches  have  less  need ; 
As  lately  happened :  In  a  town 
There  lived  a  Cobbler,  and  but  one 
That  out  of  Doctrine  could  cut  Use, 
And  mend  men's  lives  as  well  as  shoes. 
This  precious  Brother  having  slain, 
In  times  of  peace,  an  Indian, 
(Not  out  of  malice,  but  mere  zeal, 
Because  he  was  an  Infidel,) 
The  mighty  Tottipottymoy 
Sent  to  our  Elders  an  envoy, 
Complaining  sorely  of  the  breach 
Of  league  held  forth  by  Brother  Patch, 
Against  the  articles  in  force 
Between  both  churches,  his  and  ours, 
For  which  he  craved  the  Saints  to  render 
Into  his  hands,  or  hang  th'  Offender; 
But  they  maturely  having  weighed 
They  had  no  more  than  him  o'  th'  trade, 
(A  man  that  served  them  in  a  double 
Capacity,  to  teach  and  cobble,) 
Resolv'd  to  spare  him ;  yet  to  do 
The  Indian  Hoghan  Moghan  too 
Impartial  justice,  in  his  stead  did 
Hang  an  old  Weaver  that  was  bed-rid." 

The  right  man  was  hanged,  but  even  this 
did  not  give  "  ye  Indeans  contente."  They 


130  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

made  a  plot  to  exterminate  the  white  men. 
Few  in  numbers  themselves,  they  sent  mes- 
sengers to  the  Narragansetts,  to  the  Cape 
Cod  tribes,  and,  in  short,  to  all  their  neigh- 
bors in  the  forest,  and  arranged  for  a  gen- 
eral massacre.  Winslow  went  to  see  Mas- 
sasoit,  who  was  sick,  and  either  by  applica- 
tion of  simple  remedies  or  by  turning  out 
the  native  doctors  with  their  tom-toms,  re- 
covered him  to  health;  and  Massasoit 
disclosed  the  plot. 

Standish,  at  the  same  time,  went  on  an- 
other expedition  to  Cape  Cod  for  corn,  and 
met  with  a  cold  reception  from  Indians 
who  had  before  been  friendly.  He  found 
Wituwamat  there,  a  Massachusetts  Indian, 
who  flourished  a  knife,  and  made  a  wild 
speech,  insulting  the  captain.  That  night 
one  of  the  savages  insisted  on  sleeping  in 
Standish 's  lodging,  making  great  protesta- 
tions of  friendship.  The  night  was  bit- 
terly cold,  and  partly  by  reason  of  the 
weather,  partly  from  anxiety  and  sus- 
picion, the  captain  took  no  rest,  "  but 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      131 

either  walked,  or  turned  himself  to  and  fro 
at  the  fire."  The  Indian  asked  him  why 
he  did  not  sleep,  and  he  answered  that ' '  he 
knew  not  well,  but  he  had  no  desire  at  all 
to  rest."  So  the  perilous  night  passed. 

No  sooner  had  Win  slow  and  Standish 
returned  with  these  ill  tidings,  than  Phin- 
ehas  Pratt  suddenly  appeared  from  Wes- 
sagusset,  covered  with  snow,  fainting  with 
fear,  hunger,  and  weariness,  and  pursued 
by  Indians.  He  brought  information  that 
the  plot  was  on  the  eve  of  execution. 

Standish  took  eight  men  with  him  and 
proceeded  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  peril. 
Nobody  in  the  colony  knew  the  Indians  as 
he  did.  Winslow  says  that  he  could  un- 
derstand their  language  better  than  any  of 
the  others.  He  knew  that,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, conciliation  would  be  impos- 
sible. It  was  a  hard  case.  The  Indians 
had  a  good  deal  of  right  on  their  side.  A 
company  of  vagabonds  gathered  from  the 
corners  of  London  streets  made  most  un- 
pleasant neighbors,  whom  even  the  Pil- 


132  THE  ADVENTUBES  OF 

grims  could  not  endure.  It  was  natural 
enough  that  the  Indians  should  resolve  to 
get  rid  of  them,  and  natural  enough,  also, 
that  they  should  fail  to  make  a  fine  dis- 
crimination and  should  include  all  the  peo- 
ple of  pale  face  under  the  ban.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  lives  of  the  Plymouth  set- 
tlers were  at  stake,  and  the  great  cause  for 
which  they  stood  was  in  peril.  Standish 
saw  clearly  that  there  was  but  one  way  out. 
And  he  took  that  way. 

Being  arrived  at  the  stockade  at  Wes- 
sagusset,  the  captain  found  the  colonists 
weak  and  frightened,  and  the  Indians  bold 
and  insulting.  Wituwamat  showed  a  sharp 
knife  having  a  woman's  face  pictured  on 
the  handle.  "  I  have  another  at  home," 
he  said,  "  wherewith  I  have  killed  both 
French  and  English,  and  that  hath  a  man's 
face  on  it;  and  by-and-by  these  two  must 
marry."  Pecksuot,  also,  a  man  of  great 
size,  taunted  Standish  on  his  short  stature. 
The  next  day,  being  the  6th  of  April, 
1623,  they  came  again,  these  braves  and 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      133 

a  few  others,  the  leaders  and  inspirers  of 
the  plot.  They  were  allowed  to  enter  the 
blockhouse.  Suddenly  Standish  gave  a 
signal,  and  upon  the  instant  leaped  on 
Pecksuot,  seized  the  knife  which  hung  at 
his  neck,  and  stabbed  him  with  it.  Each  of 
his  four  or  five  companions  attacked  an- 
other savage.  The  door  was  fastened,  and 
for  a  few  tragic  moments,  without  groan 
or  cry,  the  struggle  went  on.  When  the 
door  was  opened,  the  men  who  were  the 
heart  and  hands  of  the  conspiracy  were  all 
dead.  On  the  day  after  there  was  a  brief 
skirmish  in  which  Hobamack  put  the 
remaining  warriors  to  flight. 

When  Pastor  Robinson,  in  Leyden,  heard 
of  this  encounter  he  was  much  grieved 
thereat,  and  besought  the  church  to  con- 
sider the  disposition  of  their  captain,  who 
was  of  a  warm  temper,  adding  also,  in 
words  applicable  to  other  campaigns  of 
nearer  date,  "  0  how  happy  a  thing  had 
it  been  that  you  had  converted  some  be- 
fore you  killed  any."  There  is  no  doubt, 


134  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

however,  but  that  Standish,  by  thus  taking 
the  lives  of  a  few,  saved  the  lives  of  many, 
both  Englishmen  and  Indians.  It  was  the 
only  blood  which  the  captain  shed.  There- 
after, his  name  alone  was  as  terrible  as  an 
army  with  banners. 

One  of  the  original  settlers  at  Wessa- 
gusset  was  Thomas  Morton.  Morton  was 
a  London  lawyer,  an  ardent  sportsman  and 
lover  of  nature.  Massachusetts  delighted 
him.  Its  "  many  goodly  groves  of  trees, 
dainty,  fine,  round,  rising  hillocks,  delicate, 
fair,  large  plains,  sweet,  crystal  fountains, 
and  clear  running  streams,"  with  fruit 
and  flowers  and  "  lilies  of  the  Daphnean 
tree,"  made  the  land  seem  to  him  like 
Paradise.  He  returned  to  England  before 
winter  came  to  change  his  mind,  and  be- 
fore the  Wessagusset  people  entered  into 
their  misfortunes.  Presently  Captain 
Wollaston  fitting  out  an  expedition,  Mor- 
ton came  back  with  it;  and  after  some 
months,  Wollaston  and  most  of  his  party 
having  moved  to  Virginia,  Morton  put  him- 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      135 

self  at  the  head  of  the  half-dozen  who 
remained. 

The  settlers  established  themselves  at 
Passonagessit,  within  the  limits  of.  the 
present  city  of  Quincy.  There  they  built 
their  house  on  the  summit  of  one  of  those 
gentle  hills  which  Morton  liked  so  much, 
looking  out  over  Boston  Bay.  They  had 
two  purposes :  one  was  to  trade  with  the 
Indians  for  skins;  the  other  was  to  have 
as  good  a  time  as  was  possible  under  the 
circumstances.  Their  pursuit  of  these 
purposes  made  them  excessively  obnoxious 
to  all  their  prudent  and  serious  English 
neighbors.  Morton,  indeed,  with  his 
boisterous  ideas  of  pleasure  and  his  frank 
dislike  of  Puritans,  represented  everything 
that  was  objectionable  in  politics,  in 
religion,  and  in  manners.  Bradford  says 
that  he  ' '  became  lord  of  misrule  and  main- 
tained (as  it  were)  a  school  of  Atheisme." 
Mr.  Fiske,  in  his  "  Beginnings  of  New 
England,"  suggests  that  the  accusation  of 
atheism  was  "  based  upon  the  fact  that  he 


136  THE  ADVENTURES  OP 

used  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. "  That 
Morton  used  the  Prayer  Book  he,  himself, 
asserts.  "  Mine  host,"  he  says,  meaning 
himself,  "  was  a  man  that  indeavoured  to 
advance  the  dignity  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, which  they  (on  the  contrary  part) 
would  labour  to  vilifie  with  uncivile  terms ; 
enveying  against  the  sacred  book  of  com- 
mon prayer  and  mine  host  that  used  it  in 
a  laudable  manner  amongst  his  family,  as 
a  practice  of  piety."  Mr.  Charles  Francis 
Adams,  in  his  "  Three  Episodes  of  Massa- 
chusetts History,"  thinks  it  likely  that 
Morton  somewhat  exaggerated  his  cham- 
pionship in  order  to  get  the  favor  of  Laud 
in  the  troubles  which  he  presently  had  with 
the  Puritans.  The  combination  of  fervent 
piety  with  Morton's  marked  devotion  to 
"  barrells  of  beere  "  and  "  lassies  in 
beaver  coats  "  is,  to  say  the  least,  improb- 
able. And  the  spectacle  of  Master  Morton 
reading  the  Morning  Prayer  with  his  com- 
panions at  Merrymount  passes  imagina- 
tion. There  is,  at  least,  no  doubt  but  that 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      137 

in  his  trading  with  the  Indians,  he  sold 
them  guns  and  ammunition.  That,  of  it- 
self, made  him  a  mischievous  citizen. 
Every  colonist's  life  was  endangered. 

On  the  May-day  of  1627  the  men  of  Mer- 
rymount  set  up  a  May-pole.  We  ' l  brewed 
a  barrell  of  excellente  beere,"  says  the 
chief  offender,  telling  his  own  story, ' '  and 
provided  for  a  case  of  bottles,  to  be  spent, 
with  other  good  cheare,  for  all  comers  of 
that  day. ' '  And  he  ' '  brought  the  Maypole 
to  the  place  appointed  with  drummes, 
gunnes,  pistols  and  other  fitting  instru- 
ments for  that  purpose ;  and  there  erected 
it  with  the  help  of  savages,  that  came 
thether  of  purpose  to  see  the  manner  of 
our  Bevels."  So  they  danced  about  it,  the 
white  men  and  the  braves  and  the  lassies  in 
beaver  coats,  and  were  as  merry  as  the  day 
was  long. 

This,  the  "  precise  separatists  that  lived 
at  New  Plymouth  "  found  a  "  lamentable 
Spectacle."  Twice  they  wrote  to  Morton, 
but  he  answered  with  high  words.  The 


138  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

situation  became  so  serious  that  all  the 
settlers  up  and  down  the  neighboring 
coasts  were  concerned.  If  the  Merry- 
mount  proceedings  continued,  the  resi- 
dence of  decent  people  in  those  parts  would 
become  impossible.  Finally,  Myles  Stan- 
dish  was  sent  out  to  arrest  the  offending 
household.  He  took  eight  men  with  him, — 
a  number  which  he  seems  to  have  pre- 
ferred in  the  face  of  danger  or  difficulty, — 
and  laid  hold  on  Morton  as  he  was  on  a 
visit  to  Wessagusset.  But  in  the  night 
Morton  got  away.  They  had  him  sleep- 
ing between  guards,  but  the  guards  slept 
sounder  than  he  did.  Suddenly  a  door 
slammed  and  they  awoke  to  find  him  gone. 
"  The  word,"  he  says,  "  which  was  given 
with  an  alarme,  was,  '  O,  he's  gon — he's 
gon!  What  shell  wee  doe,  he's  gon!' — the 
rest  (halfe  a  sleepe)  start  up  in  a  maze, 
and,  like  rames,  ran  their  heads  one  at  an- 
other full  batt  in  the  darke.  Their  guard 
leader,  Captaine  Shrimpe,  tooke  on  most 
furiously,  and  tore  his  clothes  for  anger  to 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      139 

see  the  empty  nest  and  their  bird  gone. 
The  rest  were  eager  to  have  torne  theire 
haire  from  theire  heads;  but  it  was 
so  short,  that  it  would  give  them  no 
hold." 

Standish  and  his  men  started  in  pursuit, 
and  found  Morton  and  two  companions  en- 
trenched at  Merrymount,  well  armed  with 
guns,  but  too  drunk  to  use  them.  Thus 
they  were  captured,  and  brought  down  to 
Plymouth,  whence  Morton  was  presently 
shipped  to  England,  where  he  wrote  his 
"  New  English  Canaan,"  and,  in  various 
ways,  at  the  court  of  Charles  I,  did  what 
he  could  to  make  trouble  for  the  colony. 

Meanwhile  the  captain  had  comforted 
himself  in  his  hardships  and  responsibili- 
ties by  a  second  marriage. 

The  earliest  account  which  I  can  find  of 
the  romantic  tradition  which  is  associated 
with  Standish 's  memory  is  in  the  Rev. 
Timothy  Alden's  "  Collection  of  American 
Epitaphs."  Mr.  Alden  says  that  he  had  the 
story  from  those  to  whom  it  had  been  care- 


140  THE  ADVENTURES  OP 

fully  handed  down.  ' '  In  a  very  short  time 
after  the  decease  of  Mrs.  Standish,  the 
captain  was  led  to  think  that  if  he  could 
obtain  Miss  Priscilla  Mullins,  a  daughter 
of  Mr.  William  Mullins,  the  breach  in  his 
family  would  be  happily  repaired.  He, 
therefore,  according  to  the  custom  of  those 
times,  sent  to  ask  Mr.  Mullins 's  permission 
to  visit  his  daughter.  John  Alden,  the 
messenger,  went  and  faithfully  communi- 
cated the  wishes  of  the  captain.  The  old 
gentleman  did  not  object,  as  he  might  have 
done,  on  account  of  the  recency  of  Captain 
Standish 's  bereavement.  He  said  it  was 
perfectly  agreeable  to  him,  but  the  young 
lady  must  also  be  consulted.  The  damsel 
was  then  called  into  the  room,  and  John 
Alden,  who  is  said  to  have  been  a  man  of 
most  excellent  form,  with  a  fair  and  ruddy 
complexion,  arose,  and,  in  a  very  courteous 
and  prepossessing  manner,  delivered  his 
errand.  Miss  Mullins  listened  with  re- 
spectful attention,  and,  at  last,  after  a  con- 
siderable pause,  fixing  her  eyes  upon  him, 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      141 

said,  *  Prithee,  John,  why  do  you  not  speak 
for  yourself?'  " 

The  captain's  second  wife  was  Barbara, 
whose  other  name  is  unknown,  a  passenger 
by  the  Ann.  Presently  he  settled  on  his 
land  at  Duxbury,  having  the  Captain's 
Hill  in  the  middle  of  his  farm,  now  crowned 
by  his  tall  monument.  Here  he  built  him 
a  house,  wherein  he  lived  to  the  end  of  his 
days.  Here  he  gathered  his  children  about 
him :  his  six  boys,  Alexander,  Charles,  John, 
Myles,  Josiah,  and  a  second  Charles,  and 
his  daughter,  Lora.  The  little  daughter's 
sampler  is  in  Pilgrim  Hall  in  Plymouth, 

"  Lora  Standish  is  my  name. 

Lord,  guide  my  heart  that  I  may  do  thy  will; 
Also  fill  my  hands  with  such  convenient  skill 

As  will  conduce  to  virtue  void  of  shame, 
And  I  will  give  the  glory  to  thy  name." 

Alexander  Standish  married  Sarah  Alden, 
daughter  of  John  and  Priscilla. 

The  captain  continued  all  his  life  in  the 
military  command  of  the  colony.  Once  he 
went  to  fight  the  French,  who  had  inter- 
fered with  the  Plymouth  trade  on  the  Pen- 


142  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

obscot  river,  but  it  was  a  fruitless  expedi- 
tion. Again  he  prepared  to  fight  the 
Dutch,  when  there  was  war  between  Eng- 
land and  Holland  in  1652,  but  peace  was 
declared  before  colonial  hostilities  began. 
The  Narragansetts  raised  a  force  to  attack 
the  settlements,  and  the  captain  led  the 
Plymouth  company  which  marched  with 
the  men  of  Massachusetts,  Connecticut, 
and  New  Haven  to  meet  them,  but  the 
Indians  did  not  fight. 

Standish  took  part  also  in  the  civil  af- 
fairs of  the  colony.  For  twenty  years  he 
was  one  of  the  governor's  assistants.  Once 
he  went,  as  agent  of  the  plantation,  to  Eng- 
land, where  he  began  the  negotiations  by 
which,  later,  he  and  seven  others  bought 
out  all  the  interests  of  the  Merchant  Ad- 
venturers in  the  Plymouth  Colony  for 
£1,800.  The  year,  however,  was  a  bad  one. 
Even  within  sight  of  England,  the  com- 
panion to  Standish 's  ship  was  captured  by 
the  Turks,  and  passengers  and  crew  sold 
into  slavery.  Affairs  of  state  were  in 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH       143 

disorder,  and  the  plague  was  in  possession 
of  London.  It  was  no  time  to  do  business, 
and  Standish  returned,  having  borrowed 
£150  at  50  per  cent,  interest. 

Lowell,  in  his  "  Interview  with  Miles 
Standish,"  sits  before  the  fire  at  twilight, 
looking  reflectively  upon  a  chair  beside 
him,  which  had  been  conveyed  to  these 
shores  in  the  good  ship  Mayfloiver. 

"  It  came  out  in  that  famous  bark 

That  brought  our  sires  intrepid, 
Capacious  as  another  ark 
For  furniture  decrepit." 

And  as  the  logs  burn  low,  and  the  poet's 
thoughts  go  back  into  those  old  days  which 
he  had  been  considering,  behold  the  chair 
is  occupied ;  he  sees 

"...  its  trembling  arms  enclose 

A  figure  grim  and  rusty, 
Whose  doublet  plain  and  plainer  hose 
Were  somewhat  worn  and  dusty." 

And,  as  he  wonders  who  his  guest  may  be, 

"Just  then  the  ghost  drew  up  his  chair 
And  said,  'My  name  is  Standish.' " 


144  THE  ADVENTURES  OF 

Whereupon  ensues  a  sturdy  conversation, 
in  which  the  captain  speaks  his  mind  on 
the  subject  of  compromise  with  slavery. 

Thus  he  sat  in  his  declining  days,  look- 
ing out  over  the  green  country  which  his 
strong  arm  had  helped  to  win,  reading  his 
Homer's  "  Hiad  "  with  an  appreciation 
which,  in  these  gentler  days,  we  miss,  con- 
sulting now  his  "  Country  Farmer,"  and 
now  his  "  Phisition's  Practice,"  accord- 
ing to  the  emergency,  bucolic  or  domestic; 
studying  his  "  History  of  the  World,"  in 
whose  continuing  chapters  he  himself 
should  have  a  place;  and  on  Sundays  re- 
freshing his  soul  with  Borroughs'  "Gos- 
pell  Conversation,"  and  the  martial  psalms 
of  David. 

There  is  a  touch  of  tenderness  in  the 
words  of  the  old  man's  will,  which  seems, 
for  a  moment,  to  be  foreign  to  the  grim 
spirit  of  him  who  stabbed  Pecksuot,  and 
nailed  the  head  of  Wituwamat  to  the  wall 
of  the  meeting-house.  But  the  captain  had 
a  warm  heart  ever.  He  loved  his  friends 


CAPTAIN  MYLES  STANDISH      145 

with  an  enduring  and  solicitous  affection. 
We  may  not  forget  his  faithful  nursing  in 
the  first  tragic  winter.  He  desires  that 
his  body  may  be  laid  as  near  as  conveni- 
ently may  be  to  his  two  dear  daughters, 
Lora  his  daughter,  and  Mary,  his  daughter- 
in-law.  He  commends  his  dear  and  lov- 
ing wife,  Barbara  Standish,  to  the  Chris- 
tian counsel  and  advice  of  his  dear  friends, 
Mr.  Timothy  Hatherly  and  Captain  James 
Cudworth.  "  Further,  my  will  is  that 
Marcye  Kobenson,  whom  I  tenderly  love 
for  her  grandfather's  sake,  shall  have  three 
pounds." 

So  he  died,  on  the  3d  day  of  October, 
1656,  with  the  regard  of  all  who  knew  him, 
having  rendered  inestimable  service  to  the 
cause  of  religion,  of  freedom,  and  of 
humanity. 


THE  EDUCATION  OF  JOHN 
HARVARD 


IV 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  JOHN 
HARVARD 

A  ili  that  was  known  of  John  Harvard 
before  the  22d  of  February,  1884,  may 
be  stated  in  two  minutes.  It  was  based 
on  a  will,  a  signature,  a  record,  and  a  book. 

A  will  had  been  found  in  London  drawn 
by  a  Eobert  Harvard,  one  of  whose  sons 
was  named  John.  It  was  possible  that  this 
John  was  the  benefactor  of  New  England, 
but  there  was  no  proof.  If  he  was,  then 
his  father  belonged  to  the  parish  of  St. 
Saviour's,  Southwark,  and  was  by  trade 
a  butcher. 

A  signature  had  been  found  in  Cam- 
bridge, England,  plainly  that  of  our  John 
when  he  took  his  degree.  This  showed  that 
he  studied  at  Emmanuel  College,  and  was 
made  B.A.  in  1631  and  M.A.  in  1635. 

A  record  remaining  in  the  annals  of  the 

149 


150  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

First  Church  of  Charlestown,  Massachu- 
setts, showed  that  John  Harvard  came  to 
this  country  in  1637,  was  admitted  a  min- 
ister of  God's  Word  in  that  place,  died  in 
1638,  and  left  to  the  neighboring  college, 
newly  founded,  his  library  and  half  of  his 
estate.  A  curious  particularity  in  the 
midst  of  the  general  ignorance  recorded 
that  this  contribution  was  £779  17s.  2d. 
The  twopence  were  especially  provoking. 

Beside  the  will,  the  signature,  and  these 
local  facts,  was  one  book  remaining  from 
the  library.  All  the  others  were  burned  at 
the  destruction  of  Harvard  Hall  in  1764. 
This  volume  was  a  stout  folio  entitled 
11  The  Christian  Warfare."  A  borrower 
had  it  on  the  day  when  the  library  was 
destroyed. 

In  1882  persons  interested  in  genealogy 
raised  money  to  have  English  records 
searched  for  facts  about  New  England 
families.  The  results  were  to  be  published 
in  the  "  New  England  Historical  and 
Genealogical  Register."  Mr.  H.  F.  Waters, 


JOHN  HARVARD  151 

a  graduate  of  Harvard  interested  in  such 
matters,  was  intrusted  with  this  commis- 
sion, and  went  to  England  and  set  about 
reading  seventeenth  century  wills.  In  the 
midst  of  this  business,  having  already  con- 
sulted several  thousands  of  these  docu- 
ments, suddenly,  on  Washington's  Birth- 
day, 1884,  he  rose  up  from  his  reading  and 
said  to  his  fellow  antiquaries:  "  I  have 
put  my  finger  on  John  Harvard!" 

Mr.  Waters  had  found  the  will  of 
Thomas  Harvard,  of  Southwark,  cloth- 
worker.  His  estate  was  to  be  divided  be- 
tween his  widow  and  his  living  brother, 
John  Harvard.  He  gave  directions  con- 
cerning his  funeral  at  St.  Saviour's,  South- 
wark, and  left  forty  shillings  to  Mr.  Nich- 
olas Morton,  the  minister,  in  recompense 
of  the  funeral  sermon.  One  of  the  execu- 
tors was  Mr.  Morton,  the  other  was  John 
Harvard.  A  note  attesting  the  proving  of 
the  will  by  Mr.  Morton,  May  5,  1637,  pro- 
vided for  a  commission  to  be  issued  to  John 
Harvard  when  he  should  come  to  seek  it. 


152  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

Here,  accordingly,  was  a  John  Harvard 
absent  from  England  in  1637,  at  the  exact 
time  when  our  John  Harvard  was  on  the 
sea  coming  in  this  direction. 

This  clue  led  the  way  to  such  discoveries 
that  there  is  now  no  New  Englander 
of  that  generation  concerning  whose 
relatives  we  know  so  much. 

Another  dramatic  moment  in  these 
genealogical  adventures  came  at  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon.  Mr.  Waters  found  that 
John  Harvard's  mother  was  Katherine 
Rogers,  of  Stratford.  He  went  to  the  par- 
ish church  there  and  spent  a  day,  as  he 
says,  from  matins  to  evensong,  examining 
the  records,  learning  about  the  Eogers's. 
As  he  walked  about  the  town  in  the  long 
English  twilight,  he  looked  with  interest 
at  the  timbered  front  of  a  fine  Elizabethan 
house,  under  whose  second  story  window 
stood  the  inscription  T.  E.  1596  A.  R.  At 
once  there  came  to  his  mind  the  names  of 
Thomas  Rogers  and  Alice,  his  wife.  No- 
body in  Stratford  knew  what  the  initials 


JOHN  HARVARD  153 

meant,  but  the  records  of  the  property  veri- 
fied his  conjecture.  It  was  the  house  of 
John  Harvard's  grandfather,  his  mother's 
father. 

These  two  incidents,  the  clause  in  the 
will  and  the  inscription  on  the  house,  were 
but  more  dramatic  events  in  a  process  of 
patient  research  whereby  the  facts  con- 
cerning John  Harvard  became  known. 
These  facts  are  centred  mainly  about 
three  places,  Southwark,  Cambridge,  and 
Charlestown. 

John  Harvard  was  born  in  the  London 
borough  of  Southwark,  at  the  south  end  of 
London  Bridge,  in  1607,  the  Jamestown 
year.  The  date  is  determined  by  an  entry 
in  the  parish  register  of  St.  Saviour's 
Church,  showing  that  he  was  baptised  in 
that  year,  on  the  29th  of  November.  The 
site  of  the  house  is  located  by  the  token 
books  of  St.  Saviour's  Church.  According 
to  ancient  custom  a  token  in  the  shape  of 
a  lead  or  pewter  ticket  was  given  to  every 
communicant  once  a  year,  and  was  by  him 


154  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

returned  to  the  vicar  on  the  occasion  of 
his  attendance  at  the  service.  A  record  of 
these  tickets  was  kept  in  the  token  book, 
wherein  were  entered  the  name  and  address 
of  every  communicant.  The  book  shows 
that  the  Harvards  lived  in  High  Street, 
opposite  the  Boar's  Head  Inn. 

The  father  of  John  Harvard,  like  the 
father  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  was  a  butcher. 
It  was  a  good  business  in  Southwark,  ex- 
ceeded only,  if  at  all,  by  that  of  inn-hold- 
ing; the  place  was  filled  with  inns  and 
butcher  shops.  For  London  Bridge  was 
the  great  gate  of  London.  There  began 
the  road  to  Winchester  and  to  Canterbury, 
and  to  the  great  world  in  general.  There 
was  continual  coming  and  going ;  hence  the 
demand  for  inns,  and  the  demand  for 
butchers  to  supply  them. 

John  Harvard's  mother,  Katherine 
Eogers,  knew  the  Shakespeares,  at  Strat- 
ford. Her  father  and  Shakespeare's 
father  were  aldermen  together  and  near 
neighbors.  From  1596  to  1611,  that  is,  till 


JOHN  HARVARD  155 

John  Harvard  was  four  years  of  age,  Will- 
iam Shakespeare  had  his  residence  in 
Southwark,  where  his  Globe  Theatre  stood 
not  far  from  the  Harvard  house.  It  is  a 
fair  guess  that  he  visited  his  old  friends, 
and  that  on  the  occasion  of  these  visits  he 
held  John  Harvard  on  his  knee.  As  for 
Katherine,  she  was  three  times  married: 
to  Eobert  Harvard,  the  butcher ;  after  his 
death  to  John  Elletson,  the  cooper;  after 
his  death  to  Richard  Yearwood,  a  grocer, 
having  a  seat  in  the  Puritan  Parliament. 
She  was  evidently  a  pleasant  person.  The 
money  which  founded  Harvard  College 
came  from  the  earnings  of  these  honest 
tradesmen. 

There  were  brothers  and  sisters.  Mary 
and  Eobert  were  older  than  John ;  Thomas, 
Katherine,  and  Peter  were  younger. 

The  town  of  Southwark  of  that  day  was 
a  busy  and  interesting  place.  Standing  at 
the  door  of  the  Harvard  house  and  look- 
ing to  the  left  one  saw  the  Thames,  crossed 
by  London  Bridge,  whose  formidable  gate 


156  THE  EDUCATION  OP 

served  for  the  purpose  of  defence  and  for 
the  display  of  heads  of  offenders.  In  a 
picture  made  in  1616,  when  John  Harvard 
was  of  the  age  of  nine,  eighteen  such  heads 
on  pikes  are  displayed  above  the  gate. 

Looking  to  the  right,  one  saw  the  street, 
gradually  widening,  ascend  St.  Margaret's 
hill.  In  the  middle,  almost  in  front  of  the 
Harvard  house,  were  the  pillory  and  the 
cage,  and  beyond  these  the  bull  ring,  for 
baiting  bulls.  The  bear  garden  for  bait- 
ing bears  was  on  the  river  bank,  next  to 
the  Globe  Theatre.  The  process  of  bait- 
ing was  to  fasten  the  bull  or  the  bear  be- 
hind and  let  the  dogs  loose  upon  him.  The 
Puritans  were  said  to  object  to  this  en- 
tertainment, not  on  account  of  the  pain 
which  it  gave  to  the  bear,  but  on  ac- 
count of  the  pleasure  which  it  gave  to  the 
spectators.  In  this  they  were  quite  right. 

Directly  across  the  road  from  the  Har- 
vard door  was  the  Boar's  Head  Inn,  and 
to  the  right,  in  almost  continuous  row, 
were  nine  other  taverns;  including  the 


JOHN  HARVARD  157 

Tabard,  memorable  as  the  meeting  place 
of  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims,  and  the  White 
Hart,  where  Mr.  Pickwick  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Sam  Weller ;  and  the  Queen's 
Head,  which  John  Harvard's  mother  left 
him  in  her  will.  Behind  the  Boar's  Head, 
in  large  grounds,  stood  St.  Thomas's  Hos- 
pital. On  one  side  of  the  Harvard  house 
was  the  Bull's  Head  Inn,  on  the  other  side 
was  the  east  chain  gate  of  the  churchyard 
of  St.  Saviour's  Church.  Near  the  church 
in  the  same  enclosure  was  the  Grammar 
School,  which  the  church  maintained. 

John  Harvard  began  his  schooling,  ac- 
cording to  custom,  at  the  age  of  seven,  and 
continued  this  form  of  education  for  a 
dozen  years  till  he  was  prepared  for  col- 
lege. Shakespeare  gives  a  picture  of  the 
schoolboy  of  John  Harvard's  time: 

"The  whining  schoolboy  with  his  satchel 
And  shining  morning  face,  creeping  like  a  snail 
Unwillingly  to  school." 

The  day  began  in  winter  at  seven,  in  sum- 
mer at  six,  and  continued,  with  two  hours 


158  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

intermission  for  dinner,  until  five  or  six. 
Thus  the  rules  required  a  boy  to  bring,  not 
only  a  Bible  and  other  books,  pens,  paper 
and  ink  in  his  satchel,  but  candles  for  the 
early  and  late  hours  of  the  dark  days  of 
winter.  There  was  a  vacation  of  one  week 
at  the  time  of  the  Southwark  Fair.  One 
reason  why  the  whining  schoolboy  went  un- 
willingly to  school  is  seen  by  the  advice 
given  by  the  authorities  to  parents  "  to 
manage  with  great  discretion  and  severity 
at  home,  which  will  make  him  love  his 
school."  Every  quarter  every  boy  paid 
twopence  for  brooms  and  rods;  these 
brooms  were  not  intended  for  domestic  use, 
but  were  applied  to  the  dusting  of  the 
boys'  backs.  The  boy  of  seven  must  al- 
ready know  the  rudiments  of  Latin  gram- 
mar, and  be  able  to  read  Tully,  his  Second 
Epistle,  and  Corderius,  his  "  Dialogues." 
Thence  he  proceeded  along  the  ways  of 
Latin  and  Greek  and  Hebrew. 

St.     Saviour's     Church,     whose    bells 
sounded  in  John  Harvard's  ears  from  his 


JOHN  HARVARD  159 

earliest  infancy,  had  been  the  chapel  of  a 
priory  of  Augustinian  monks,  and  was  then 
named  St.  Mary  Overy,  which  is  inter- 
preted to  mean  St.  Mary  of  the  Ferry,  for 
the  church  antedated  London  Bridge.  But 
Henry  the  Eighth  had  suppressed  the  pri- 
ory, and,  putting  the  two  parishes  together, 
had  named  the  church  St.  Saviour's.  It  is 
still  a  noble  sanctuary,  with  long  aisles  and 
clustering  chapels  and  ancient  monuments, 
and  serves  to-day  as  the  Cathedral  of 
Southwark. 

A  canon  of  1603  designated  sixteen  as  the 
age  of  first  communion.  It  is,  therefore, 
to  be  inferred  that  John  Harvard  was  con- 
firmed about  the  year  1623.  The  vicar  at 
that  time  was  Dr.  Sutton,  who  is  remem- 
bered by  two  incidents.  He  hated  the 
theatre  and  attacked  it  in  his  sermons. 
Southwark,  at  that  time,  was  the  theatrical 
centre  of  London.  The  Globe  and  the 
Eose  were  both  within  the  parish  of  St. 
Saviour's.  One  of  Dr.  Sutton 's  sermons 
was  answered  with  some  indignation  by  an 


160  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

actor.  John  Harvard's  father  was  a  church 
warden,  and  the  boy  probably  heard  both 
the  sermon  and  the  discussion  which  fol- 
lowed. Dr.  Button  was  also  an  enemy  of 
Eoman  Catholics.  In  October,  1623,  after 
the  vicar 's  death  by  drowning,  a  large  con- 
gregation of  Eoman  Catholics,  meeting  in 
an  upper  room  in  London,  heard  a  sermon 
preached  by  Father  Drury,  a  Jesuit, 
against  Luther,  Calvin,  and  Dr.  Sutton. 
The  sea,  he  said,  had  swallowed  the  vicar 
because  he  was  unworthy  to  be  buried  in 
the  earth.  At  that  moment  the  floor  gave 
way  and  the  preacher  and  the  con- 
gregation were  precipitated  into  the  cellar. 

The  bishop  to  whom  Dr.  Sutton  prob- 
ably presented  John  Harvard  for  confirma- 
tion was  that  most  devout,  learned,  and 
large-minded  prelate,  Launcelot  Andrewes, 
in  whose  charge  was  the  diocese  of  Win- 
chester. 

Thus  John  Harvard  spent  his  boyhood 
in  a  good  home,  in  an  interesting  town,  and 
under  the  profitable  instruction  of  church 


JOHN  HARVARD  161 

and  school.  The  high  street  was  of  itself  an 
education.  It  was  a  place  of  continual  pro- 
cession, merchants  and  dignitaries  from 
foreign  lands  passing  daily  on  the  way  to 
London.  And  along  with  this  went  the  nor- 
mal life  of  childhood.  The  picture  which 
shows  the  heads  on  the  pikes  shows  also 
a  boy  rolling  a  hoop,  and  another  boy 
catching  on  behind  a  cart. 

But  in  1625  the  plague  came.  The  sani- 
tary conditions  were  indescribable,  and  of- 
fered an  imperative  invitation  to  the  pesti- 
lence. The  street  around  the  corner  was 
named  Foul  Lane,  and,  no  doubt,  deserved 
that  title.  Within  a  space  of  five  weeks  five 
members  of  the  Harvard  household  died: 
first  Mary,  then  Eobert,  four  days  later; 
then  little  Katherine  and  little  Peter; 
finally  the  father.  There  remained  the 
mother  and  her  two  sons,  John  and 
Thomas. 

It  may  have  been  this  tragedy  which 
turned  young  Harvard's  thoughts  towards 
the  ministry.  Or  it  may  have  been  the  in- 


162  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

fluence  of  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Morton,  of  St. 
Saviour's,  whom  we  have  seen  already  as  a 
close  friend  of  the  family.  It  was  prob- 
ably the  influence  of  Morton  which  sent  him 
to  Cambridge  and  to  Emmanuel  College,  of 
which  Morton  was  himself  a  graduate.  It 
is  interesting  to  remember  in  this  connec- 
tion that  Morton's  son,  Charles,  came 
afterwards  to  this  country.  He  had  done 
some  tutoring  in  the  midst  of  his  ministry, 
and  one  of  his  pupils  had  been  De  Foe,  the 
author  of  "  Eobinson  Crusoe."  Charles 
became  vice-president  of  Harvard  College, 
being,  perhaps,  the  only  person  who  ever 
occupied  that  unusual  academic  position. 
They  would  have  appointed  him  president 
but  for  the  fact  that  he  had  made  himself 
obnoxious  to  James  U,  and  such  honor 
seemed  politically  unwise.  He  became  min- 
ister of  the  First  Church  in  Charlestown. 
So  John  Harvard  went  to  Cambridge,  the 
Puritan  University.  The  Reformation  had 
divided  Christianity  in  Europe  into  two 
distinct  companies, — Catholic  and  Protes- 


JOHN  HARVARD  163 

tant.  The  Catholics  upheld  the  value  of 
the  institution,  the  Protestants  the  impor- 
tance of  the  individual.  In  England  the 
two  companies  dwelt  together  in  one 
church.  Two  sects  had,  indeed,  appeared 
at  the  extremes ;  on  the  one  side,  the  Sep- 
aratists ;  on  the  other  side,  the  Eomanists, 
had  separated  from  the  Church.  But  the 
men  of  the  Old  Learning  and  the  New 
Learning,  as  they  were  called  at  that  time, 
the  High  Church  and  the  Low  Church,  as 
they  are  called  to-day,  were  still  united. 
The  time  was  indeed  approaching  when 
Charles  and  Laud  in  their  endeavor  to  en- 
force uniformity  should  disrupt  the  church. 
But  to  the  end  of  John  Harvard's  life  there 
was  no  definite  division.  The  words  Puri- 
tan and  Non-conformist,  like  the  word 
Ritualist,  were  party  names.  The  time 
came  when  Puritans  and  Non-conformists 
were  forced  out,  but  so  long  as  John  Har- 
vard lived  they  were  simply  Low-Church 
members  of  the  Church  of  England.  They 
subtracted  from  the  rubrics,  as  the  Ritual- 


164  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

ists  added  to  them,  but  they  did  not  sep- 
arate. The  loyal  and  affectionate  words 
of  Higginson  and  Winthrop  express  their 
relation  to  their  brethren.  It  came  to  pass, 
indeed,  in  New  England,  partly  by  reason 
of  distance,  partly  by  reason  of  the  attrac- 
tive sample  of  the  Separatists  of  Plym- 
outh, partly  on  account  of  the  extremes 
into  which  they  were  driven  by  controversy, 
that  they  set  up  a  church  order  of  their 
own.  But  of  this  John  Harvard  saw  noth- 
ing in  his  native  land. 

Cambridge  had  been  an  inhabited  place 
from  times  immemorial.  In  the  flat  land 
by  the  little  river  the  Britons  had  made 
a  hill,  heaping  up  the  earth.  Around  this 
hill  the  Romans  had  built  a  fort.  On  the 
site  of  the  Eoman  fort  William  the  Con- 
queror had  built  a  castle.  And  nearby,  in 
1284,  Bishop  Hugh  de  Balsham,  of  Ely,  had 
founded  the  first  college  and  named  it 
Peterhouse.  Then  another  college  had 
been  founded  and  another,  until,  in  John 
Harvard's  time,  there  were  sixteen,  with 


JOHN  HARVARD  165 

masters,  tutors,  fellows,  and  students  to  the 
number  of  three  thousand. 

It  was,  no  doubt,  the  expectation  in  New 
England  in  1636  that  beside  Harvard  Col- 
lege would  be  other  colleges,  with  other 
founders,  as  beside  Peterhouse  grew 
Kings'  and  Trinity,  and  that  these,  to- 
gether, would  constitute  a  university.  For 
in  the  minds  of  Englishmen  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  university  did  not  mean  a 
combination  of  faculties,  but  a  combination 
of  colleges.  The  university  gave  examina- 
tions, conferred  degrees,  and  provided  cer- 
tain courses  of  lectures.  The  colleges  pro- 
vided places  of  residence,  kept  men  under 
regulation,  and  prepared  them,  each  in  its 
own  fashion,  to  be  examined.  Take  the 
fraternity  houses  of  a  small  college,  set  in 
each  a  number  of  resident  graduates  called 
fellows,  appoint  a  dean  for  discipline,  and 
provide  tutors,  leaving  the  college  to  set 
the  examinations  and  to  conduct  the  exer- 
cises of  commencement,  and  the  place  is 
transformed  into  a  university  of  the  Eng- 


166  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

lish  type.  Build  the  chapter  houses  after 
monastic  models :  a  central  quadrangle,  on 
one  side  a  dormitory,  on  another  side  a  re- 
fectory, on  the  third  a  library,  on  the 
fourth  a  chapel,  and  a  group  of  such  resi- 
dences will  be  the  heart  of  a  university 
town. 

Such  was  the  Cambridge  to  which  John 
Harvard  went  at  the  age  of  twenty,  and 
in  Emmanuel  College,  then  an  establish- 
ment of  sixty  or  seventy  men,  he  took  up 
his  residence. 

The  little  town  lay  beside  the  Cam  as  the 
Massachusetts  Cambridge  lies  beside  the 
Charles,  except  that  the  English  colleges 
passed  the  banks  of  the  river.  The  gardens 
ran  green  to  the  water.  The  main  street 
in  the  midst  of  the  town  curved,  like  Brat- 
tle Street,  with  the  curves  of  the  stream, 
and  took  a  new  name  at  almost  every  turn. 
It  was  a  narrow,  ill-paved  thoroughfare, 
and  the  upper  stories  of  the  houses  pro- 
jected over  the  way.  There  were  plentiful 
materials  for  the  plague,  and  once  during 


JOHN  HARVARD  167 

Harvard's  residence  the  University  had  to 
be  dismissed  on  account  of  it. 

Midway  in  the  course  of  the  main  street, 
in  the  heart  of  the  town,  was  St.  Mary's 
Church,  where  the  University  sermons 
were  preached  and  public  meetings  were 
held.  The  church  fronted  on  th©  market. 
Out  of  the  market-place,  away  from  the 
river,  a  short  street  led  to  Christ's  Col- 
lege, founded  by  Lady  Margaret,  Henry 
VII 's  mother.  Here,  in  the  garden,  is  still 
an  aged  mulberry,  which  Milton  planted 
in  John  Harvard's  time.  On  one  side  of 
Christ's  College  stood  Sidney  Sussex,  on 
the  other  side,  Emmanuel. 

Sidney  Sussex  .and  Emmanuel  were  the 
newest  colleges,  the  only  ones  then  in  the 
University  founded  after  the  Eeformation. 
But  they  were  seated  in  places  long  occu- 
pied by  monasteries:  Sidney  Sussex  on 
the  site  of  a  monastery  of  Franciscan 
Friars ;  Emmanuel  on  the  site  of  a  monas- 
tery of  Dominican  friars. 

The  two  colleges  were  alike,  not  only 


168  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

in  taking  their  places  back  from  the  river, 
where  no  room  was  left,  but  in  being 
founded  by  Puritans  for  the  advancement 
of  Puritanism.  It  seemed  to  the  founders 
that  the  supreme  need  of  England  was  god- 
liness, and  that  the  means  thereto  was 
preaching.  So  on  the  mediaeval  founda- 
tions of  preaching  friars  they  established 
these  training  places  for  preachers. 

Emmanuel  College  was  a  divinity  school. 
Founded  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  it  con- 
tinued until  the  reign  of  Charles  II,  a  sem- 
inary for  Puritan  clergymen  of  the  Church 
of  England.  It  bore  over  its  gate  an  in- 
scription to  testify  that  Sir  Walter  Mild- 
may  had  established  it  for  the  study  of 
theology.  This  matter  Sir  Walter  made 
unmistakable  in  his  nineteenth  statute: 
"  I  wish  all  to  understand,  whether  fel- 
lows, scholars,  or  even  pensioners  who  are 
admitted  into  the  college,  that  the  one  ob- 
ject which  I  set  before  me  in  erecting  this 
college  was  to  render  as  many  as  possible 
fit  for  the  administration  of  the  divine 


JOHN  HARVARD  169 

word  and  sacraments;  and  that  from  this 
seed  ground  the  English  church  might 
have  those  that  she  can  summon  to  instruct 
the  people  and  undertake  the  office  of  pas- 
tors, which  is  a  thing  necessary  above  all 
others.  Therefore,  let  fellows  and  scholars 
who  obtrude  into  the  college  with  any  other 
design  than  to  devote  themselves  to  sacred 
theology  and,  eventually,  to  labor  in 
preaching  the  Word  know  that  they  are 
frustrating  my  hope  and  occupying  the 
place  of  fellow  or  scholar  contrary  to  my 
ordinance." 

Statutes  may  be  put  out  of  sight,  as  this 
one  is  in  the  present  administration  of  the 
college,  and  ivy  may  grow  over  inscrip- 
tions, but  in  those  days  nobody  could  at- 
tend a  service  at  Emmanuel  without  per- 
ceiving plainly  the  intention  and  the  dis- 
position of  the  place.  The  founder  had 
turned  the  chapel  of  the  friars  into  a  dining 
hall,  and  had  the  chapel  north  and  south  in- 
stead of  east  and  west,  in  evident  disregard 
of  ecclesiastical  tradition.  As  for  the  serv- 


170  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

ice,  it  was  described  in  1636  in  a  report 
made  to  Laud:  "  Their  chapel  is  not  con- 
secrate. At  surplice  prayers  they  sing 
nothing  but  rhyming  psalms  of  their  own 
appointment  instead  of  the  hymns  between 
the  lessons.  And  lessons  they  read  not 
after  the  order  appointed  in  the  calendar, 
but  after  another  continued  course  of  their 
own.  All  service  is  there  done  (psalms  and 
hymns  and  all  if  they  read  any)  by  the 
minister  alone.  The  students  are  not 
brought  up  nor  accustomed  to  answer  any 
verse  at  all.  Before  prayers  begin  the 
boys  come  in  and  sit  down  and  put  on  and 
talk  around  of  what  they  will.  Their  seats 
are  placed  round  about  and  above  the  com- 
munion table.  When  they  preach  or  com- 
monplace they  omit  all  service  after  first  or 
second  lesson  at  the  farthest."  This  is  a 
graphic  picture  of  non-conformity.  These 
brethren  were  but  exercising  the  freedom 
which  they  felt  belonged  to  them  of 
right  as  clergymen  of  the  Church  of 
England. 


JOHN  HARVARD  171 

Such  was  the  little  college  in  which  John 
Harvard  took  up  his  studies  in  1627.  The 
course  extended  over  four  years,  leading  to 
the  degree  of  bachelor  of  arts.  For  the 
master's  degree  men  stayed  three  years 
longer.  The  subjects  studied  at  Emmanuel 
did  not  differ  greatly  from  those  pursued 
in  the  other  colleges,<for  all  led  to  the  same 
examinations,  except  that  rather  more  at- 
tention was  paid  to  theology  and  the 
interpretation  of  Holy  Scripture.  But  al- 
ready in  John  Harvard's  day  Cambridge 
showed  the  characteristic  bent  towards 
mathematics.  In  Emmanuel,  contemporary 
with  him,  were  Wallis,  who  carried  the 
study  of  mathematics  farther  than  any 
man  in  England  till  the  time  of  Newton, 
and  Horrocks,  who  was  the  first  to  both 
predict  and  observe  a  transit  of  Venus. 
So  far  as  Harvard's  books  show  the  bent 
of  his  mind,  he  did  not  care  particularly 
for  the  arts  of  calculation.  Neither  does 
he  appear  to  have  had  any  great  enthusi- 
asm for  philosophy,  which  was  another 


172  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

favorite  study  among  his  fellows.  Aristotle 
was  still  the  master  of  the  mind  at  Cam- 
bridge, though  at  Emmanuel  was  a  group 
of  devout  Platonists.  There  is  a  little  nat- 
ural history  among  Harvard's  books,  and 
a  little  law,  but  most  of  the  books  are  con- 
cerned with  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics 
and  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible. 

The  college  day  began  at  five  o'clock, 
when  the  bells  rang  for  prayers.  There 
were  two  meals,  at  eleven  and  three,  with 
lectures,  studies,  and  disputations  between. 
There  was  the  river  for  rowing,  and  the 
fields  for  archery  and  football.  On  Sunday 
morning  all  went  for  the  university  ser- 
mon to  St.  Mary's.  At  eight  in  the  even- 
ing every  man  was  expected  to  present 
himself  in  the  room  of  his  tutor,  partly  for 
the  purpose  of  an  evening  prayer,  and 
partly  as  evidence  that  he  was  within  the 
college  walls.  At  a  quarter  after  nine  the 
bell  of  St.  Mary's  rang,  ending  its  peal  as 
it  does  to  this  day  with  a  tolling  of  the  day 
of  the  month.  At  ten  the  college  bell 


JOHN  HARVARD  173 

warned  all  hearers  that  the  college  gates 
were  locked. 

The  buildings  were  as  severe  within  as 
they  were  stately  without.  There  was 
plenty  of  carving  and  rich  stained  glass, 
but  very  little  fire.  In  the  bleak  rooms 
three  or  four  men  were  lodged  together. 
If  one  of  the  company  was  a  master  of  arts 
lie  slept  in  the  great  bed  and  the  under- 
graduates must  be  content  with  trundle 
beds,  which,  in  the  daytime,  were  trundled 
under  the  big  bed  out  of  sight.  Life  was 
pretty  rough,  as  it  was  in  the  contemporary 
world.  Even  at  Emmanuel  there  was  more 
fighting  and  drinking  and  disturbance  at 
prayers  than  one  would  expect  in  a  Puri- 
tan divinity  school.  Offenders  were  flogged 
in  public,  a  discipline  which  is  commended 
to  the  president  in  the  early  statutes  of 
Harvard  College. 

At  the  same  time  there  was  high  think- 
ing. Contemporary  with  Harvard  in  the 
university  were  Fuller,  the  historian ;  Cra- 
shaw,  the  poet ;  Pearson,  whose  lectures  on 


174  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

the  creed  are  still  studied  in  conservative 
schools  of  theology ;  More,  the  Platonist,  of 
whom  it  is  said  that,  rejecting  Calvin,  he 
came  into  "  a  most  joyous  and  lucid  frame 
of  minde  ' ' ;  Jeremy  Taylor,  the  preacher, 
and,  supreme  among  them  all,  John  Mil- 
ton. Milton  entered  Cambridge  two  years 
before  Harvard.  They  were  both  members 
of  the  University  when  he  wrote  his  Ode  on 
the  Nativity,  his  lines  on  Shakespeare,  and 
his  "  H  Penseroso."  Both  men  came  from 
London,  and  must  have  journeyed  back 
and  forth  in  the  same  conveyance.  Hobson 
was  then  alive,  whose  impartial  method  of 
suiting  his  customers  became  a  proverb. 
He  was  the  first  man  in  England  to  keep 
a  livery  stable.  He  had  a  monopoly  of  the 
carrying  trade  between  the  university  and 
the  metropolis.  The  two  young  men  would 
naturally  meet  in  the  process  of  these 
journeys. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  Puritanism  of 
Harvard  was  of  the  gentle  quality  which 
shines  in  the  verse  of  Milton.  Having  a 


JOHN  HARVARD  175 

mother  who  had  known  Shakespeare  from 
childhood,  he  may  well  have  shared  in  Mil- 
ton's appreciation  of  that  poet.  Brought 
up  as  a  boy  at  St.  Saviour's,  he  may  well 
have  entered  with  the  delight  of  Milton 
into  the  influences  of  that  stately  architec- 
ture. Certain  it  is  that  Whichcote,  one  of 
his  fellow-students,  master  of  King's  in  the 
troubled  days  which  followed,  saved  that 
glorious  chapel  from  harm  at  Puritan 
hands. 

A  memorial  window  on  the  chapel  of 
Emmanuel  College  shows  the  figures  of 
John  Harvard  and  Lawrence  Chaderton. 
Chaderton  was  the  first  master  of  the  col- 
lege, and  though  he  was  no  longer  in  the 
discharge  of  his  duties  when  Harvard  was 
in  residence,  his  influence  was  still  very 
strong.  He  is  remembered  as  a  preacher 
of  such  eloquence  that  on  one  occasion  after 
preaching  for  two  hours  and  making  ready 
to  bring  his  sermon  to  a  close,  the  congre- 
gation begged  him  to  continue,  which  he 
did  to  the  space  of  one  hour  longer.  He 


176  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

was  one  of  the  revisers  who  made  the  King 
James  version  of  the  Bible,  being  on  the 
committee  to  which  was  assigned  the  books 
from  First  Chronicles  to  Ecclesiastes. 
After  him  in  the  rectorship  came  Preston, 
some  of  whose  books  John  Harvard  had 
in  his  library,  and  Sandcroft,  a  man  of 
liberal  spirit. 

Under  these  masters  the  students  who 
were  contemporary  with  Harvard  took 
some  one  side  and  some  another  in  the  con- 
tention between  the  High  Church  and  the 
Low.  Thus,  of  the  two  Pierreponts,  one 
served  the  Parliament  and  the  other  served 
the  King.  There  was  Spurstowe,  who  was 
on  the  committee  to  treat  with  the  King  in 
his  captivity,  and  who,  having  him  thus  at 
disadvantage,  told  him  that  unless  he  abol- 
ished episcopacy  he  would  be  damned  ever- 
lastingly; and  there  was  Sancroft,  who 
became  Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  And 
quite  apart  from  these  vigorous  partisans 
were  philosophers  of  gentle  spirit,  the 
Platonists,  of  whom  "Whichcote  and  Cud- 


JOHN  HARVARD  177 

worth  were  Harvard's  fellow-students  at 

t 

Emmanuel,  studying  Plato  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  Aristotle,  maintaining  the  free- 
dom of  the  will  in  the  midst  of  Calvinism, 
and  upholding  the  value  of  learning  in  the 
face  of  a  generation  disposed  to  accept  a 
pious  intention  as  a  fair  substitute  for 
scholarship. 

Harvard  completed  his  course  with  the 
degree  of  master  of  arts  in  1635.  Simonds 
D'Ewes,  who  was  at  that  tune  in  the  col- 
lege, noted  in  his  diary  that  the  commence- 
ment sermon  upheld  the  principles  of 
popish  doctrine  and  gave  great  offence  to 
evangelical  minds.  It  would  have  been 
pleasant  to  have  had  some  account  of  the 
speech  of  the  Prevaricator,  a  privileged 
person  who  had  the  right  on  that  solemn 
occasion  to  make  whatever  remarks  he 
chose.  In  1635  Harvard  was  ordained.  In 
his  mother's  will — she  died  in  that  year — 
he  is  called  "  clerk."  The  same  title, 
equivalent  to  "  clergyman,"  occurs  in  a 
deed  which  he  made  about  that  time  at  the 


178  THE  EDUCATION  OP 

sale  of  some  property.  Later  he  is  so  styled 
in  the  will  of  his  father-in-law.  If  he  was 
ordained  in  his  own  diocese  of  Winchester, 
the  ordaining  bishop  would  have  been 
Walter  Curie;  but  he  was  a  follower  of 
Laud.  The  young  Low  Churchman  may 
have  sought  some  more  congenial  digni- 
tary. The  records  have  not,  as  yet,  ap- 
peared. 

In  1636  he  was  married  at  South  Mailing 
Church  to  Ann  Sadler,  daughter  of  the  rec- 
tor of  the  parish  of  Eingmer  in  Kent,  and 
sister  of  a  college  friend. 

About  this  time  he  completed  the  col- 
lection of  his  library,  the  books  which  he 
left  to  the  young  college.  These  numbered 
over  three  hundred,  mostly  in  two  styles 
of  bookmaking  now  rarely  used,  some  of 
them  being  folios  and  some  duodecimos,  the 
big  and  the  little  side  by  side.  The  classics 
were  represented  by  Homer,  Plutarch, 
Pliny,  Horace,  and  Cicero,  with  the  satires 
of  Juvenal  and  the  comedies  of  Terence. 
Most  of  the  books  were  theological,  great 


JOHN  HARVARD  179 

tomes  of  eager  controversy  written  by  men 
who  wrote  in  a  mighty  passion,  and  read  by 
men  who  clenched  their  fists  in  the  prog- 
ress of  the  pages,  now  dreary  and  dull  be- 
yond all  modern  patience.  They  have 
been,  in  many  instances,  replaced  by  dupli- 
cates in  the  library  at  Harvard  College, 
but  not  with  the  idea  of  attracting  readers. 
Three  of  these  books  have  a  certain  per- 
sonal interest.  One  is  "  Vox  Civitatis," 
being  a  description  of  the  plague  which  de- 
vastated London  in  the  days  so  tragic  and 
memorable  for  the  Harvard  household. 
Another  is  ' '  The  Art  and  Science  of  Pre- 
serving Body  and  Soul  in  Health,  Wisdom 
and  the  Catholic  Religion,"  by  Dr.  John 
Jones.  "  Eight  profitable,"  says  the 
author,  "  for  all  persons,  but  chiefly  for 
Princes,  Eulers,  Nobles,  Bishops,  Preach- 
ers, Parents,  and  those  of  the  Parliament 
House."  It  is  possible  that  young  Har- 
vard consulted  this  book  in  the  hope  of 
finding  some  defence  against  those  ills 
of  body  which  already  assailed  him.  The 


180  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

third  book  is  "  A  Little  Description  of 
the  Great  World,"  written  by  Heylin. 
He  did  not  find  here  any  information 
useful  to  one  who  was  looking  toward 
these  shores,  for  Heylin  confines  his  ac- 
count of  this  continent  mostly  to  Mexico 
and  Peru.  His  second  edition  was  pub- 
lished in  1633,  but  even  here  he  makes  no 
mention  of  the  settlement  of  Plymouth. 

For  some  reason,  the  young  parson's 
mind  was  turned  in  this  direction.  Other 
Emmanuel  men  had  already  made  their 
way  to  this  country,  and  the  memory  and 
fame  of  them  may  have  attracted  him. 
There  was  "William  Blackstone,  the  first 
settler  of  Boston,  a  quiet  person,  detesting 
controversy,  enough  of  a  Low  Churchman 
to  dislike  my  lords  the  bishops,  but  enough 
of  a  High  Churchman  to  dislike,  also,  my 
lords  the  brethren.  There  was  John  Cot- 
ton, once  rector  of  St.  Botolph's,  now  min- 
ister of  Boston  in  New  England.  There 
were  Francis  Hooker,  of  Hartford,  and 
Thomas  Shepherd,  of  Cambridge.  These 


JOHN  HARVARD  181 

were  great  names  among  the  men  with 
whom  John  Harvard  was  congenial,  and 
their  example  may  well  have  seemed  to  him 
a  pleasant  one  to  follow.  In  February, 
1637,  he  sold  some  property  in  Southwark. 
In  May,  when  the  will  of  his  brother 
Thomas  was  waiting  for  his  signature,  he 
was  on  the  sea.  On  the  6th  of  August,  1637, 
he  was  admitted  a  freeman  in  Charlestown. 
When  John  Harvard  and  his  wife  ar- 
rived at  Charlestown  they  found  the  whole 
colony  absorbed  in  the  controversy  which 
had  arisen  concerning  the  teachings  of 
Mrs.  Hutchinson.  It  is  likely  that  Har- 
vard's first  sight  of  Cambridge  was  on  the 
occasion  of  his  attendance  at  the  famous 
trial  which  resulted  in  Mrs.  Hutchinson 's 
excommunication.  Thus  he  found  that  in 
removing  to  New  England  he  had,  indeed, 
changed  the  scenery  and  the  architecture, 
and  had  substituted  the  brethren  for  the 
bishops,  but  that  there  was  no  real  dif- 
ference in  the  prevailing  disposition  in 
religion.  In  America,  as  in  England, 


182  THE  EDUCATION  OF 

there  were  two  contending  parties.  Each 
was  confident  of  its  own  right,  and  felt  it- 
self conscientiously  bound  to  put  dissenters 
out.  The  chief  difference  between  Arch- 
bishop Laud  and  Dr.  Wilson,  pastor  in  the 
church  in  Boston,  was  that  Laud  had  bet- 
ter manners.  Winthrop  expressed  the  sit- 
uation when  he  said,  after  the  synod  in 
Cambridge,  that  the  majority,  "  finding, 
upon  consultation,  that  two  so  opposite 
parties  could  not  continue  in  the  same  body 
without  apparent  hazard  of  ruin  to  the 
whole,  agreed  to  send  away  some  of 
the  principals."  It  was  the  policy  of 
"  Thorough  "  which  Charles  and  Straff ord 
were  pushing  in  England.  In  John  Har- 
vard's day  tolerance  had  not  yet  come  into 
the  order  of  the  virtues. 

Like  other  Puritan  congregations,  the 
Charlestown  church  was  ministered  to  by 
a  pastor  and  a  teacher.  Lacking  a  teacher 
at  that  moment,  they  asked  Harvard  to  dis- 
charge that  duty,  and  he  accepted  the  posi- 
tion. Johnson,  who  wrote  the  "  Wonder- 


JOHN  HAEVAED  183 

Working  Providence, ' '  and  probably  heard 
some  of  Harvard's  preachings,  says  that 
he  "  preached  with  tears  and  evidence  of 
strong  affection."  This  is  our  only  sight 
of  Harvard  himself.  On  the  fourteenth  of 
September,  1638,  he  died,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-nine,  leaving  the  will  which  has 
made  his  name  immortal.  The  essential 
importance  of  his  gift  appears  in  the  fact 
that,  though  the  General  Court  appro- 
priated four  hundred  pounds  for  the  col- 
lege, it  had  not  paid  it.  Indeed,  so  poor 
was  the  General  Court  itself  that  it  pres- 
ently borrowed  two  hundred  pounds  from 
the  Harvard  legacy. 

In  January,  1696,  Judge  Sewall  wrote  in 
his  diary :  "I  lodged  at  Charlestown  at 
Mrs.  Shepherd's,  who  tells  me  that  Mr. 
Harvard  built  that  house.  I  lay  in  the 
chamber  next  the  street.  As  I  lay  awake 
past  midnight,  in  my  meditation  I  was  af- 
fected to  consider  how  long  ago  God  had 
made  provision  for  my  comfortable  lodg- 
ing that  night,  seeing  that  was  Mr.  Har- 


184     EDUCATION  OF  JOHN  HARVARD 

yard's  house."  The  students  of  the  Uni- 
versity to-day  may  echo  that  reflection, 
and  may  profitably  be  affected  to  consider 
how  long  ago  God  made  provision  for  their 
education;  seeing  that  is  Mr.  Harvard's 
college. 


THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 
JAMESTOWN 


THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 
JAMESTOWN 

THE  emphasis  of  interest  in  the  study 
of  American  history  has  rested  upon 
Plymouth  rather  than  upon  Jamestown. 

This  is  due,  in  part,  to  the  fact  that 
Jamestown  has  not  been  a  populated  place 
for  over  two  hundred  years.  The  town 
was  burned  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  was  never  rebuilt.  Indeed,  the 
very  land  on  which  the  pioneers  put  their 
feet  has  long  since  fallen  into  the  James 
Eiver.  The  river  and  the  land  were  con- 
tending when  the  settlement  began,  and  the 
river  was,  even  then,  getting  the  best  of  it. 
The  year  of  1607  found  a  peninsula,  but 
the  peninsula  became  an  island,  and  the 
island,  year  by  year,  lost  ground.  To-day, 
for  the  first  time,  the  river  is  kept  back 
by  an  effective  barrier.  Meanwhile  Plym- 

187 


188          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

outh  has  lived  its  uninterrupted  life,  an  ac- 
cessible place,  attractive  to  visitors,  pre- 
serving its  traditions  and  its  intimate 
memorials  of  the  saints  and  heroes  of  the 
old  time. 

Moreover,  Plymouth  has  been  a  fertile 
soil  for  the  substantial  rooting  of  family 
trees.  All  over  the  country  there  are  per- 
sons whose  ancestral  past  is  associated 
with  that  place,  and  who  hold  it  in  rever- 
ence on  that  account.  But  few  of  the  first 
families  of  Virginia  go  further  back  than 
1649.  At  that  time,  when  the  beheading  of 
King  Charles  made  England  an  unpleasant 
residence  for  many  excellent  people,  there 
was  a  considerable  increase  of  emigration 
into  that  Southern  colony,  whose  sympa- 
thies were  with  the  church  and  state  which 
the  Commonwealth  had  for  the  moment 
superseded.  These  newcomers  found  that 
the  men  who  began  and  continued  the  set- 
tlement at  Jamestown  had  for  the  most 
part  died  under  the  hardships  of  their  diffi- 
cult life.  The  pioneers  left  few  lineal  sue- 


JAMESTOWN  189 

cessors.  The  colony  at  the  beginning 
lacked  the  domestic  element  which  was  the 
joy  and  the  salvation  of  the  settlement  at 
Plymouth.  There  were  no  children  to  per- 
petuate their  names.  Moreover,  the  new- 
comers, instead  of  settling  at  Jamestown, 
planted  their  farms  all  along  the  river  as 
far  as  the  falls  at  Richmond. 

But  the  chief  and  prevailing  disadvan- 
tage of  Jamestown  in  its  competition  with 
Plymouth  for  the  gratitude  of  good  Amer- 
icans lay  in  the  fact  that  it  was  so  far  away 
from  Boston.  It  was  unhappily  beyond 
the  power  of  any  Jamestown  man  to  repeat 
the  daily  devotions  of  Mr.  Emerson,  who 
said  that  every  morning,  when  he  opened 
the  shutters  of  his  bed-chamber  and  looked 
out,  he  thanked  God  that  he  lived  in  so  fair 
a  world, — and  so  near  Boston. 

This  distance  is  suggested  but  dimly  on 
the  map.  The  two  colonies,  Massachu- 
setts and  Virginia,  hundreds  of  miles  apart 
geographically,  were  separated  by  a  space 
of  thousands  of  miles  socially  and  ecclesi- 


190          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

astically.  These  differences  were  not  in- 
herent in  the  nature  or  even  in  the  disposi- 
tion of  the  original  colonists.  They  grew 
gradually,  as  we  shall  see,  out  of  the  soil. 
In  the  beginning  the  men  who  settled  in 
the  south  and  the  men  who  settled  in  the 
north  were  of  the  same  sort,  belonged  to 
the  same  social  class,  and  held,  in  the  main, 
the  same  position  in  religion. 

As  history  comes  to  be  studied  in  the 
light  of  human  nature,  some  of  its  con- 
trasts lose  their  sharpness.  It  is  perceived 
that  nations  are  composed  of  men  and 
women,  and  that  men  and  women,  with  all 
their  differences,  are  a  good  deal  alike.  It 
is  not  true  of  any  of  the  hostile  divisions 
of  humanity  that  one  side  is  made  up  of 
angels  and  the  other  side  of  animals. 
There  are  always  good  and  bad,  and  wise 
and  unwise,  on  both  sides.  The  official 
statements  of  the  differences  are  com- 
monly more  exact  and  emphatic  than  the 
differences  themselves.  When  a  witty 
writer  begins  a  book  with  the  phrase, 


JAMESTOWN  191 

"  The  human  race,  to  which  so  many  of 
my  readers  belong,"  he  is  gently  satirising 
an  ancient  blindness  of  historians.  The  dis- 
covery that  all  of  our  forefathers  belonged 
to  the  human  race,  and  thus  had  the  same 
parts  and  passions,  and  were  brother :  and 
sisters  in  the  same  family,  is  causing  his- 
tory to  be  written  with  a  new  understand- 
ing of  old  situations.  This  is  notably  the 
case  as  regards  the  contrasts  which  have 
long  been  the  commonplaces  of  historians 
between  the  men  who  settled  Plymouth  and 
the  men  who  settled  Jamestown.  It  is  now 
seen  that  the  old  adjectives,  "  Puritan," 
and  "  Cavalier, "  do  not  adequately  explain 
the  difference  between  Virginia  and  Mas- 
sachusetts. The  truth  is  that  the  James- 
town men  and  the  Plymouth  men  were 
very  much  alike,  both  socially  and 
ecclesiastically. 

As  for  their  social  standing,  the  settlers 
of  both  colonies  were,  for  the  most  part, 
of  the  middle  class,  that  is,  as  distinguished 
on  the  one  side  from  the  gentry,  and  on 


192  THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

the  other  side  from  the  peasantry.  It  is 
true  that  the  father  of  Edward  Wingfield,  of 
Virginia,  had  had  for  sponsors  Queen  Mary 
and  Cardinal  Pole,  but  John  Winthrop,  of 
Massachusetts,  was  Edward  Wingfield 's 
cousin.  It  is  true  that  the  early  sailing 
lists  to  Virginia  show  the  names  of  an  in- 
ordinate number  of ' '  gentlemen, ' '  and  that 
the  early  sailing  lists  to  Massachusetts 
show  the  names  of  an  inordinate  number  of 
preachers  of  the  gospel;  and  there  is  no 
doubt  but  that  these  two  facts  represent 
diverse  and  potent  influences.  But  later 
lists  corrected  this  disproportion.  It  is 
true,  also,  that  when  the  Discovery,  the 
Godspeed,  and  the  Susan  Constant  made 
their  first  voyage,  England  was  a  pleasant 
and  desirable  residence  for  churchmen, 
and  that,  in  1630,  when  seventeen  ships 
brought  the  people  of  a  new  exodus  to  these 
northern  shores,  England  was  not  a  pleas- 
ant or  desirable  residence  for  Puritans. 
And  that  signifies  some  difference  in  the 
quality  of  the  colonists.  There  would  nat- 


JAMESTOWN  193 

urally  be  a  larger  number  of  solid  and 
successful  men  in  the  settlement  of  Mas- 
sachusetts than  in  the  settlement  of  Vir- 
ginia. But  the  change  in  the  political  for- 
tunes of  the  two  parties  speedily  changed 
that.  In  the  time  of  Cromwell,  England 
was  as  inhospitable  to  churchmen,  as  she 
had  been  to  Puritans  in  the  times  of  James 
and  of  Charles,  and  the  church  colony 
improved  accordingly. 

The  society  of  Virginia  and  the  society 
of  Massachusetts  developed  differently, 
but  the  differences  were  mainly  due  not 
to  an  original  unlikeness  in  the  men,  but  to 
an  original  unlikeness  in  the  land.  The 
land  in  Massachusetts  was  adapted  to  the 
growth  of  small  towns ;  the  land  in  Virginia 
was  adapted  to  the  growth  of  great  estates. 
The  northern  settlers  gathered  into  little 
communities  by  the  harbors  of  the  sea  and 
by  the  falls  of  /the  rivers  under  conditions 
which  fostered  democracy.  But  in  the 
south  it  was  soon  found  that  the  best  crop 
was  tobacco.  When  Governor  Argall  ar- 


194          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

rived  in  Jamestown  in  1616,  he  found  to- 
bacco growing  in  the  street ;  it  had  invaded 
the  towns.  Tobacco  plants  and  towns  did 
not  thrive  together.  Even  in  1624  there 
were  only  two  communities  in  Virginia 
which  consisted  of  clustered  houses  as  in  a 
New  England  village.  The  cultivation  of 
tobacco  demanded  wide  tracts  of  land,  and 
a  great  amount  of  unskilled  labor.  In  the 
midst  of  his  estates,  surrounded  by  em- 
ployes of  a  lower  social  class,  and  sepa- 
rated from  his  neighbors  by  several  miles 
of  bad  road,  the  Virginian  settler  lived  in 
his  great  house.  These  were  conditions 
which  fostered  aristocracy.  But  it  was  an 
American  aristocracy,  with  very  slight  con- 
nections with  England.  It  met  in  parish 
meetings,  as  the  Massachusetts  people  met 
in  town  meetings.  And  it  produced  George 
Washington.  With  its  good  and  its  ill,  it 
was  the  result,  not  of  a  different  kind  of 
settler,  but  of  a  different  kind  of  soil. 

Also,  in  religion,  the  men  of  Jamestown 
and  the  men  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  even  of 


JAMESTOWN  195 

Plymouth,  were  of  the  same  stock.  There 
were  obvious  differences  which,  because 
they  are  obvious,  have  been  overestimated, 
but  they  were  mainly  superficial.  The  men 
of  Jamestown  were  churchmen,  that  is, 
they  were  of  the  Church  of  England,  or,  as 
we  say  in  this  country,  Episcopalians.  And 
that  seems  to  make  them  very  different 
from  the  Independents  of  Plymouth  and 
the  Presbyterians  of  Boston.  But  the  idea 
is  what  is  called  in  logic  the  fallacy  of  the 
undistributed  middle.  For  example,  we 
used  to  be  taught  in  school  that  the  Amer- 
ican Eevolution  was  fought  between  the 
Americans  on  one  side  and  the  British  on 
the  other,  and  an  easy  inference  was  that 
we,  as  good  Americans,  ought  to  hate  the 
British.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  War  of 
the  Eevolution  was  fought  between  the 
Whigs  and  the  Tories:  and  there  were 
Tories  in  America  as  well  as  in  England, 
and  Whigs  in  England  as  well  as  in  Amer- 
ica. It  happened  that  in  England  at  that 
moment  the  Tories  were  in  power,  so  they 


196  THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

represented  England  officially,  but  they  did 
not  represent  Edmund  Burke  or  William 
Pitt,  or  any  of  their  party.  Thus,  instead 
of  England  making  war  upon  America,  we 
have  an  English  political  party,  tempo- 
rarily in  power,  carrying  on  that  war 
against  the  protests  of  another  English 
party,  temporarily  out  of  power. 

The  same  confusion  has  attended  the 
use  of  the  phrase  "  Church  of  England." 
For  in  the  Church  of  England,  as  in  the 
nation,  there  have  been,  since  the  Bef  orma- 
tion,  and  are  to  this  day,  two  parties  as 
distinct  and  different  as  Whigs  and  Tories. 
The  original  name,  and  still  the  best  name 
for  them,  was  the  Old  Learning  and  the 
New  Learning:  that  is,  on  one  side  were 
men- whose  sympathies  were  with  the  me- 
diaeval church,  and  on  the  other  side  were 
men  whose  sympathies  were  with  the  re- 
formed church.  Sometimes  one  of  these 
parties  was  in  popular  power,  and  some- 
times the  other.  In  the  reign  of  Edward 
the  Sixth,  the  New  Learning  was  dominant, 


JAMESTOWN  197 

under  Archbishop  Cranmer;  in  the  reign 
of  Charles  the  First,  the  Old  Learn- 
ing was  dominant,  under  Archbishop 
Laud.  In  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  after  the 
medieval  reaction  under  Mary,  nearly  two 
hundred  clergymen  of  the  Old  Learning 
were  turned  out  by  the  party  of  the  New 
Learning,  among  them  being  fourteen 
bishops  and  twelve  presidents  of  colleges. 
In  the  time  of  Charles  the  Second,  after  the 
reform  reaction  under  Cromwell,  eighteen 
hundred  clergymen  of  the  New  Learning 
were  turned  out  by  the  party  of  the  Old 
Learning.  But  these  were  consequences  of 
national  revolution :  commonly  the  two  par- 
ties live  in  peace  together.  Together  they 
compose  the  church,  as  Republicans  and 
Democrats  compose  the  state.  Their  joint 
existence  occasions  that  diversity  of  ritual 
and  of  opinion  which  is  one  of  the  most 
notable  characteristics  of  the  Episcopal 
Church. 

Now,  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  men  of  the  New  Learning,  the 


198          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

men  whom  we  now  call  Low  Churchmen 
and  Broad  Churchmen,  were  in  part  con- 
servative and  in  part  radical.  The  differ- 
ence between  them  has  been  happily  com- 
pared to  the  differences,  before  our  Civil 
War,  between  the  Eepublicans  and  the 
Abolitionists.  In  1607  the  radical  Low 
Churchmen  had  gone  out  of  the  church, 
and  in  the  fall  of  that  year  a  company  of 
them  went  out  of  the  country,  and  estab- 
lished themselves  in  Holland.  These  were 
our  forefathers,  who  came  afterwards  to 
Plymouth.  In  1630  a  thousand  conserva- 
tive Low  Churchmen  came  to  these  shores, 
landing  at  Salem  and  settling  presently  in 
Boston.  These  were  they  who  said  as  they 
departed :  ' '  Farewell,  dear  England ! 
Farewell,  the  Church  of  God  in  England, 
and  all  the  Christian  friends  there !  We  do 
not  go  to  New  England  as  Separatists 
from  the  Church  of  England,  though  we 
cannot  but  separate  from  the  corruptions 
of  it."  These  were  they  in  whose  behalf 
John  Winthrop  wrote,  "  We  desire  you 


JAMESTOWN  199 

would  be  pleased  to  take  notice  of  the  prin- 
cipals and  body  of  our  company  as  those 
who  esteem  it  our  honour  to  call  the  Church 
of  England  from  which  we  rise  our  dear 
mother,  and  we  cannot  part  from  our  na- 
tive country  where  she  specially  resideth, 
without  much  sadness  of  heart,  and  tears 
in  our  eyes,  ever  acknowledging  that  such 
hope  and  part  as  we  have  obtained  in  the 
common  salvation,  we  have  received  it  in 
her  bosom,  and  suckt  it  from  her  breasts." 
It  was  such  men  as  these  who  had  come  in 
1607  and  settled  at  Jamestown. 

That  these  companies  of  colonists  at 
Salem  and  at  Jamestown  developed  differ- 
ently in  religion  was  due,  in  part,  to  the  dif- 
ference of  a  score  of  years  in  the  time  of 
their  landing,  for  in  that  period  the  politi- 
cal and  ecclesiastical  contentions  in  Eng- 
land had  sharpened  the  differences  between 
the  church  parties  to  a  degree  unknown 
at  the  settlement  of  Jamestown.  It  was 
also  due,  in  part,  to  the  influence  of  our  an- 
cestors at  Plymouth.  Under  this  influence, 


200          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

the  conservatives  became  radicals,  and 
separated  themselves  from  the  church. 
But,  at  the  beginning,  the  founders  of  Mas- 
sachusetts and  the  founders  of  Virginia 
were  all  of  the  same  religion ;  all  Calvinists 
in  doctrine,  all  Puritans,  and  all — except 
at  Plymouth — members  of  the  Church  of 
England. 

How  far  the  northern  and  southern  col- 
onies, thus  alike,  became  different  in  the 
course  of  time  is  plain  ^n  the  accusation  of 
atheism  which  the  Puritans  of  Boston  made 
against  Morton  of  Merrymount.  Mr.  John 
Fiske  says  that  the  chief  ground  on  which 
they  held  Morton  to  be  an  atheist  was  that 
he  was  accustomed  to  use  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer!  And  this  hostility  is 
further  indicated  in  that  pleasant  story 
about  Governor  Winthrop's  books  and 
rats.  Winthrop  had  a  lot  of  books  stored 
in  a  loft,  together  with  some  corn.  One  of 
the  books  was  the  New  Testament  and  the 
Prayer-book  bound  together.  The  rats  got 
in  and  ate  the  corn  and  destroyed  a  part 


JAMESTOWN  201 

of  that  book.  They  completely  demolished 
the  Common  Prayer,  leaving  the  New  Tes- 
tament scrupulously  untouched.  That 
seemed  to  Winthrop  an  exercise  of  the  di- 
vine discrimination.  That  was  in  every 
way  a  proper  disposition  of  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer. 

And  here  comes  in  the  curious  condition 
which  worked  the  discomfiture  of  the  fame 
of  Jamestown. 

For  a  long  time  all  of  the  "  articulate 
classes  "  lived  in  the  near  neighborhood 
of  Boston.  The  writers  of  books,  the  ora- 
tors, the  preachers,  the  poets,  the  histori- 
ans, and  presently  the  makers  of  profitable 
reading  for  schools,  were  all  residents 
within  an  easy  radius  of  Beacon  Hill. 
To  these  audible  and  influential  persons  the 
adventures  and  achievements  of  their  own 
ancestors  had  a  natural  and  dominant  in- 
terest. Plymouth  was  close  at  hand.  As 
for  Jamestown,  not  only  was  it  so  remote 
that  they  rarely  thought  about  it,  but  when 
they  did  think  about  it  they  disliked  it.  In 


202          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

all  honesty,  they  disregarded  or  disparaged 
it.  And  this  prejudice  they  communicated 
to  the  children  in  the  schools.  Even  to  this 
day  it  is  commonly  taken  for  granted 
among  intelligent  people,  that  our  charac- 
teristic institutions,  and  especially  our  lib- 
erties, civil  and  religious,  began  at  Plym- 
outh. As  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  they 
began  a  dozen  years  before,  at  Jamestown. 

The  story  of  Jamestown  is  in  three  chap- 
ters: the  Landing;  the  Tragedy;  the  Set- 
tlement. 

All  attempts  at  American  colonization 
by  individual  adventurers  having  failed,  a 
new  start  was  made  in  1606  by  introducing 
into  the  enterprise  the  joint-stock  method. 
In  that  year  James  I  chartered  the  Vir- 
ginia Company.  The  land  thus  granted  ex- 
tended along  the  Atlantic  Coast  from  Cape 
Fear  to  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  It  was  divided 
into  three  parts,  of  which  the  southern, 
from  Cape  Fear  to  the  Potomac,  was  as- 
signed to  a  group  of  proprietors  who  from 
their  residence  in  London  were  called  the 


JAMESTOWN  203 

London  Company.  The  northern  portion, 
from  Long  Island  Sound  to  the  Bay  of 
Fundy,  was  assigned  to  another  group  of 
proprietors,  who,  from  their  residence  in 
and  about  Plymouth  in  Devonshire,  were 
called  the  Plymouth  Company.  The  middle 
section  was  to  be  awarded  to  such  colonists 
of  either  company  as  should  first  establish 
self-supporting  settlements  in  it.  Each  of 
these  tracts  extended  back  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  which  was  thought  to  be  one  or  two 
hundred  miles  distant  across  the  country. 

On  New  Year's  Day,  1607,  the  London 
Company  sent  three  ships  to  sea, — the  Dis- 
covery, the  Godspeed,  and  the  Susan  Con- 
stant. The  names  fitted  well  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  men  who  in  the  spirit  of  ad- 
venture and  of  religion  were  seeking  to  set 
up  a  new  home  in  a  foreign  land. 

The  commander  of  the  fleet  was  Captain 
Christopher  Newport,  who  had  once  re- 
trieved the  fortunes  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh 
by  capturing  a  Spanish  treasure-ship 
whose  cargo  was  worth  four  million  dol- 


204  THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

lars.  The  council  of  the  colony  was  com- 
posed of  Bartholomew  Gesnold,  Edward 
Wingfield,  John  Smith,  John  Ratcliffe, 
John  Martin,  and  George  Eandall.  The 
chaplain  was  Eobert  Hunt,  *  *  an  honest,  re- 
ligious and  courageous  Divine  "  of  the 
English  Church. 

Of  these  men,  the  most  eminent  and  dra- 
matic was  John  Smith.  Bearing  as  he  did 
the  most  commonplace  of  names,  he  had 
nevertheless  lived  a  life  crowded  so  full  of 
romantic  adventure  that  some  very  sober 
historians  have  accounted  it  too  interesting 
to  be  true.  Smith  of  late  years  has  fallen 
under  a  serious  suspicion,  which  has  arisen 
in  part  from  the  new  methods  of  historians. 

How  pleasantly  does  Plutarch  begin  his 
life  of  Theseus.  He  confesses  that  there 
are  fables  in  the  accounts  of  antiquity,  but 
he  regrets  that  in  some  of  them  the  fabu- 
lous element  is  so  obvious,  since  otherwise 
he  ' '  might  have  graced  them  with  some  ap- 
pearance of  historical  narration. ' '  And  as 
for  the  statements  which  he  proposes  to 


JAMESTOWN  205 

present  to  the  reader  with  this  grace  of  his- 
toricity, * '  if  by  chance  in  some  places  they 
range  a  little  too  boldly  out  of  the  bounds 
or  limits  of  true  appearance  and  have  no 
manner  of  conforming  with  any  credible- 
ness  of  matter,  the  readers  in  courtesy 
must  needs  have  me  excused,  accepting  in 
good  part  that  which  may  be  written  and 
reported  of  things  so  extremely  old  and  an- 
cient." That  is,  Plutarch  frankly  tries  to 
please. 

Not  so,  the  remote  successor  of  Plutarch 
engaged  in  writing  and  reporting  things 
old  and  ancient.  Even  old  and  ancient, 
and  presumably  venerable  men — not  to 
mention  things — are  here  put  upon  a  cross- 
examination.  The  only  presupposition 
which  some  writers  seem  to  permit  them- 
selves is  the  general  proposition  that  all 
the  persons  whom  we  used  to  think  were 
good  were  really  bad,  and  those  we  used 
to  revere  as  saints  were  really  sinners  like 
ourselves.  The  classic  instance  is  Mr. 
Froude's  rehabilitation  of  King  Henry  into 


206          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

the  character  of  a  faithful  and  tender  hus- 
band. And  it  has  been  predicted  that  we 
shall  presently  discover  that  Nero,  instead 
of  fiddling  while  Kome  burned,  really 
played  a  violin  at  a  concert  given  for  the 
benefit  of  the  sufferers.  Another  canon  of 
contemporary  historical  criticism  declares 
that  any  statement  which  is  made  by  one 
person  only  is  to  be  regarded  as  probably 
untrue.  All  respectable  facts  will  be  ac- 
companied by  other  facts  to  identify  them. 
Unhappily  for  Smith,  most  of  his  adven- 
tures took  place  in  remote  regions,  without 
the  observation  of  reporters,  and  all  that 
we  know  about  them  is  what  he  tells  him- 
self. It  is  a  remarkable  story.  Smith's 
parents  died  in  his  early  childhood,  and 
left  him  to  the  care  of  guardians  who  were 
much  more  interested  in  his  property  than 
in  his  education.  Thus  in  the  course  of 
time  he  easily  got  their  permission  to  seek 
his  fortune,  and  went  to  the  wars  which 
were  perennially  in  progress  on  the  conti- 
nent of  Europe.  Tiring  of  this  activity 


JAMESTOWN  207 

after  a  few  years  he  came  home  and,  seek- 
ing a  secluded  spot  amidst  the  woods,  de- 
voted himself  to  the  diligent  reading  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  Machiavelli,  two  writ- 
ers who  bore  little  more  in  common  than 
the  coincidence  that  their  names  begin  with 
the  same  letter.  But  this,  too,  failed  to  sat- 
isfy Smith's  restless  spirit,  and  again  he 
sought  the  enthusiastic  land  of  France. 
There  he  fell  in  with  thieves  who,  having 
plundered  him  of  all  his  possessions,  left 
him  for  dead.  He  was  found,  however,  by 
a  friendly  farmer,  in  whose  house  he  was 
nursed  back  to  life.  After  that  he  went  to 
sea;  and  the  winds  blew  and  the  masts 
broke,  and  down  went  the  ship  into  the 
great  deep;  but  Smith  was  a  good  swim- 
mer, and  made  his  way  to  shore.  But  the 
shore,  on  exploration,  proved  to  be  at- 
tached to  a  desert  island,  and  it  appeared 
that,  having  escaped  the  perils  of  the  water, 
the  great  adventurer  was  fated  to  perish 
by  starvation.  His  luck,  however,  contin- 
ued constant;  there  came  along  a  compas- 


208          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

sionate  ship  and  picked  him  up,  and  off  he 
went  on  the  way  to  Egypt.  Eeturning  in 
the  same  ship,  they  fell  in  with  a  richly 
freighted  argosy  from  Venice,  of  whose 
treasures  they  promptly  possessed  them- 
selves, and  in  the  distribution  of  the  spoil 
a  good  share  came  to  Smith.  He  wandered 
for  some  months,  seeing  the  sights  of  Italy, 
but  his  spirit  was  unsatisfied  and  he  offered 
his  sword  as  a  volunteer  against  the  Turks. 
It  was  in  this  campaign  that  there  took 
place  the  crowning  exploit  of  his  life. 

They  were  besieging  the  town  of  Kegal, 
and  the  days  grew  dull.  Neither  the  be- 
siegers nor  the  besieged  were  in  the  mood 
for  fighting.  At  last  the  Turks  suggested 
a  tournament.  It  would  please  the  ladies, 
they  said,  if  the  lists  might  be  set  in  sight 
of  the  walls  and  there  might  be  some  brisk 
engagements  of  champions.  This  was  more 
than  acceptable  to  the  Christians.  And  so 
it  was.  The  Turks  chose  a  champion,  and 
the  Christians,  on  their  side,  casting  lots, 
the  lot  fell  on  Smith.  And  out  came  the 


JAMESTOWN  209 

Turk  and  Smith,  in  view  of  both  the  ex- 
pectant armies,  each  with  his  lance.  And 
Smith  was  so  fortunate  as  to  drive  his 
lance  through  the  body  of  his  adversary, 
and  thus  to  win  the  day.  On  the  morrow, 
the  Turks  challenged  Smith  by  name  to  try 
the  fortunes  of  the  fight  again.  This  time 
they  fought  with  swords,  and  Smith  was 
again  able  to  give  his  opponent  a  mortal 
wound.  But  this  occurred  a  third  time; 
on  the  third  day  a  new  Turk  with  a  battle 
axe  fell  upon  Smith,  but  Smith's  axe  hewed 
a  better  line,  and  the  third  Turk  followed 
the  other  two. 

This  tale,  which  makes  a  stiffer  demand 
upon  the  reader's  credulity  than  any  of  the 
others,  is  happily  attested  by  three  quite 
independent  evidences.  One  is  an  Italian 
book  entitled  "  The  Wars  of  Transylva- 
nia," from  which  the  Eev.  Samuel  Purchas, 
in  1625,  quoted  along  account  of  this  adven- 
ture on  the  authority  of  one  of  the  secre- 
taries of  Prince  Sigismund.  Another  is  an 
entry  at  the  Heralds'  College  in  London, 


210          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

recording  the  grant  of  a  coat-of-arms  "  to 
John  Smith,  captain  of  250  soldiers,  in 
memory  of  three  Turks'  heads,  which  with 
his  sword  before  the  town  of  Eegal  he  did 
overcome,  kill  and  cut  off,  in  the  province 
of  Transylvania."  A  third  is  the  fact  that 
when  Smith  explored  the  New  England 
coast  in  1614  he  named  three  little  islands 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Cape  Anne  the 
Turks'  Heads. 

Then  Smith's  luck  turned  and  the  winds 
of  fortune  blew  from  the  opposite  quarter. 
At  the  battle  of  Rothenthurm  he  was 
taken  prisoner  and  was  carried  to  Constan- 
tinople as  a  slave.  But  there  he  attracted 
the  kind  attention  and  sympathy,  and  per- 
haps the  affection,  of  the  lady  Tragabi- 
zanda,  in  whose  house  he  served.  She  sent 
him  to  her  brother,  the  pasha  of  Nalbrits, 
beyond  the  Sea  of  Azof;  but  her  good  of- 
fices in  his  behalf  were  disregarded.  Smith 
was  dressed  in  the  skin  of  a  wild  beast,  had 
an  iron  collar  about  his  neck,  and  was  both 
overworked  and  beaten.  One  day,  how- 


JAMESTOWN  211 

ever,  getting  the  pasha  conveniently  alone, 
he  knocked  him  down,  pounded  the  life  out 
of  him,  dressed  himself  in  the  dead  man's 
clothes,  took  the  dead  man's  horse,  and 
away  he  went  into  the  deserts.  Finally  he 
found  some  friendly  Russians,  and  made 
his  way  back  to  Prince  Sigismund  at  Leip- 
sic,  and  thence  by  easy  stages  to  England, 
where  he  arrived  just  in  time  to  join  the 
expedition  which  was  being  fitted  out  for 
Jamestown. 

This  is  indeed  a  story  of  considerable 
dimensions.  Our  acceptance  or  rejection 
of  it  should  be  determined,  the  cautious  his- 
torians tell  us,  by  our  estimation  of  the 
character  of  Smith.  Happily,  there  are 
sufficient  materials  for  making  such  an  es- 
timate. John  Smith  was  as  ready  with  his 
pen  as  with  his  sword.  His  published 
works  occupy  several  fat  volumes.  They 
do  not  at  all  support  the  charge  of  boast- 
fulness.  He  tells  his  adventures  with  the 
straightforwardness  of  a  sturdy  soldier. 
We  have  also  the  testimony  of  contempo- 


212          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

raries,  some  of  them  his  friends,  others, — 
by  reason  of  contentions  over  the  affairs  of 
the  colony, — his  enemies.  He  is  accused 
of  impatience  and  a  hasty  temper  and  a 
disposition  to  take  control  of  the  situation, 
but  not  of  any  narrow  self-conceit.  As  for 
his  friends,  one  of  them,  after  Smith  went 
back  from  Jamestown  to  England,  wrote 
this  concerning  him : 

"  Thus  we  lost  him  that  in  all  our  pro- 
ceedings made  justice  his  chief  guide  .  .  . 
ever  hating  baseness,  sloth,  pride,  and  in- 
dignity more  than  any  dangers ;  that  never 
allowed  more  for  himself  than  his  soldiers 
with  him ;  that  upon  no  danger  would  send 
them  where  he  would  not  lead  them  him- 
self ;  that  would  never  see  us  want  what  he 
either  had  or  could  by  any  means  get  us ; 
that  would  rather  want  than  borrow,  or 
starve  than  not  pay ;  that  loved  action  more 
than  words,  and  hated  falsehood  and  covet- 
ousness  worse  than  death;  whose  adven- 
tures were  our  lives  and  whose  loss  our 
deaths." 


JAMESTOWN  213 

The  little  company,  thus  provided  with 
a  council,  a  chaplain,  and  a  hero,  consisted 
of  105  persons ;  almost  exactly  the  number 
of  those  who  came  in  1620,  in  the  May- 
flower. The  expedition  was  a  commercial 
enterprise.  It  was  not  undertaken,  like 
the  settlement  at  Plymouth,  under  the 
stress  of  ecclesiastical  conditions,  nor  pri- 
marily for  the  advancement  of  religion. 
But  it  was  sent  forth  in  a  religious  spirit. 
"  The  way  to  prosper  and  achieve  good 
success,"  said  the  paper  of  instructions, 
"is  to  make  yourselves  all  of  one  mind 
for  the  good  of  the  country  and  your  own, 
and  to  serve  and  fear  God,  the  giver  of  all 
goodness,  for  every  plantation  which  our 
Heavenly  Father  hath  not  planted  shall  be 
rooted  up. ' ' 

After  a  long  and  stormy  passage,  the 
three  ships  entered  Chesapeake  Bay  in  the 
last  week  in  April,  and  made  their  way  into 
Hampton  Eoads.  The  name  Point  Com- 
fort testifies  to  their  relief  and  joy.  Sail- 
ing up  the  wide  river  which  they  named 


214  THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

for  King  James,  their  patron,  they  disem- 
barked on  the  13th  of  May  at  a  little  penin- 
sula. They  called  the  place  Jamestown, 
thus  connecting  the  King's,  name  with  Eng- 
glish  Christianity  in  America,  as  it  was 
soon  to  be  connected  with  the  English 
Bible.  The  land  was  low,  and,  as  the  col- 
onists discovered  later  to  their  cost,  was 
marshy  and  malarious.  But  it  was  far 
enough  up  the  river  to  be  out  of  the  easy 
reach  of  Spaniards,  and  the  narrow  neck 
of  land  which  connected  it  with  the  shore 
seemed  well  adapted  for  defence  against 
the  Indians.  And  in  the  spring,  and  after 
the  discomforts  of  the  sea,  the  place  seemed 
a  Garden  of  Eden.  The  birds  sang,  the 
flowers  bloomed,  the  trees  invited  the  way- 
farers to  the  safety  and  rest  of  their  cool 
shadows,  and  the  hearts  of  the  colonists 
beat  high.  One  of  them,  George  Percy, 
gives  an  account  of  the  landing: 

"  After  much  and  weary  search  (with 
their  barge  coasting  still  before,  as  Virgil 
writeth  JEneas  did,  arriving  in  the  region 


JAMESTOWN  215 

of  Italy  called  Latium  upon  the  banks  of 
the  river  Tiber)  in  the  country  of  a  Wero- 
wance  called  Wo-Win-Chapunka  (a  di- 
tionary  to  Powhatan)  within  this  fair  river 
of  Paspiheigh,  which  we  have  called  the 
King's  River,  they  selected  an  extended 
plain  and  spot  of  earth,  which  thrust  out 
into  the  depth  and  midst  of  the  channel, 
making  a  kind  of  Chersonesus  or  penin- 
sula. The  trumpets  sounding,  the  admiral 
struck  sail,  and  before  the  same  the  rest 
of  the  fleet  came  to  anchor,  and  here  to 
lose  no  further  time  the  colony  disem- 
barked, and  every  man  brought  his  par- 
ticular store  and  furniture,  together  with 
the  general  provision,  ashore;  for  the 
safety  of  which,  as  likewise  for  their  own 
security,  ease  and  better  accommodating, 
a  certain  canton  and  quantity  of  that  little 
half-island  was  measured,  which  they  be- 
gan to  fortify,  and  thereon  in  the  name  of 
God  to  raise  a  fortress,  with  the  ablest  and 
speediest  means  they  could." 
The  landing  took  place  on  Wednesday. 


216          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

On  Thursday  they  set  about  the  erection 
of  a  fort,  a  three-cornered  structure  with 
a  cannon  at  each  angle.  They  prepared 
for  Sunday  by  hanging  up  an  old  sail,  fas- 
tening it  to  three  or  four  trees,  to  shelter 
them  from  sun  and  rain;  seats  they  made 
of  logs ;  a  bar  of  wood  between  the  trees 
served  for  a  pulpit.  This  was  the  Sunday 
after  Ascension  Day.  The  words  of  the 
Epistle, ' '  The  end  of  all  things  is  at  hand, ' ' 
might  have  sounded  for  the  moment  as  a 
prophecy  of  disaster;  but  they  prayed, 
"  We  beseech  Thee,  Lord,  leave  us  not 
comfortless,"  and  the  ascription,  "  That 
God  in  all  things  may  be  glorified  through 
Jesus  Christ,  to  whom  be  praise  and  do- 
minion forever  and  ever,"  expressed  the 
desires  of  their  souls. 

"  This,"  says  Smith,  in  words  which  en- 
able us  to  see  that  sight  with  the  eyes  of 
one  who  was  himself  a  part  of  it,  "  this 
was  our  church,  till  we  built  a  homely  thing 
like  a  barne,  set  upon  cratchets,  covered 
with  rafts,  sedge  and  earth,  so  was  also  the 


JAMESTOWN  217 

walls :  the  best  of  our  houses  [were]  of  the 
like  curiosity:  but  for  the  most  part  farre 
much  worse  workmanship  that  could  nei- 
ther well  defend  [from]  wind  nor  raine." 
First  the  fort,  for  the  preservation  of  their 
lives ;  then  the  Church  for  the  salvation  of 
their  souls;  this  was  the  order  of  their 
building.  ' '  We  had  daily  Common  Prayer 
morning  and  evening,"  says  Smith,"  every 
Sunday  two  sermons,  and  every  three 
months  the  Holy  Communion,  till  our  min- 
ister died;  but  our  prayers  daily,  with  a 
homily  on  Sundaies,  we  continued  two  or 
three  years  after,  till  more  preachers 
came. ' '  There  in  the  wilderness,  with  the 
river  before,  and  the  unbroken  forest  be- 
hind, every  day  began  and  ended  with  the 
Prayer-book  prayers. 

The  settlers  had  immediate  need  of  all 
the  means  of  grace.  Hardly  had  their 
landing  been  effected  when  the  scene 
changed  to  tragedy.  This  was  the  result 
of  three  influences.  It  came  in  part  from 
the  savages,  in  part  from  the  swamps,  and 


218          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

in  part  from  the  inexperience  and  incom- 
petence of  the  settlers. 

The  savages  belonged  to  the  same  Algon- 
quin race  as  those  who  met  our  fathers  in 
New  England,  but  the  New  England  In- 
dians had  been  depleted  by  pestilence  and 
disheartened  by  defeat,  and  were  in  little 
mood  to  fight.  The  Virginia  Algonquins 
were  in  good  savage  form.  Within  a  space 
of  two  weeks  from  the  landing,  they  came 
upon  the  settlement,  two  hundred  strong, 
and  made  a  fierce  attack.  One  they  killed, 
several  they  wounded  with  their  arrows; 
and  thereafter,  for  a  long  time,  they  lurked 
behind  the  trees  watching  for  unwary  white 
men.  They  were  a  terror  and  a  menace  at 
Plymouth,  but  at  Jamestown  they  were 
persistent,  active,  and  aggressive  enemies. 

Out  of  the  early  stages  of  this  peril  the 
colonists  were  saved  by  the  coolness  and 
courage  of  John  Smith.  He  was  small  of 
stature,  but  afraid  of  nothing ;  and  he  had 
a  way  of  scaring  savages  by  looking  at 
them  which  was  as  good  as  a  battery  of 


JAMESTOWN  219 

guns.  He  saved  the  colony.  Without  him, 
the  settlement  at  Jamestown  would  have 
perished  miserably,  like  its  predecessors. 
His  famous  encounter  with  Powhatan,  and 
his  rescue  by  Pocahontas,  fit  excellently 
with  the  lists  at  Eegal  and  the  tender  in- 
terest of  Tragabizanda.  Happily,  this 
adventure  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  the 
account  of  it  was  printed  in  London  at  a 
time  when  there  were  residing  in  that  city 
not  only  several  persons  who  bore  the  cap- 
tain no  good  will,  but  the  heroine  herself. 
If  it  had  been  untrue,  or  even  exaggerated, 
contradiction  would  have  been  easy.  This 
exploit  brought  about  a  truce  between  the 
red  men  and  the  whites,  but  the  fighting 
began  again;  until  in  1622,  the  Indians 
arose  one  dark  night  and  effected  a  general 
massacre,  killing  one  out  of  ten  all  along 
the  thin  line  of  settlements  from  James- 
town to  Richmond.  So  effective,  however, 
was  the  revenge  of  the  colony  that  from 
that  time  the  Indians  ceased  to  be  a 
dreaded  foe. 


220          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

Meanwhile,  tragedy  came  from  the  ma- 
larious swamps.  The  first  hot  summer  at 
Jamestown,  like  the  first  cold  winter  at 
Plymouth,  killed  half  of  the  company. 
George  Percy,  who  described  the  landing 
in  such  good  spirits,  gives  this  account  of 
the  fever  time  which  followed : 

"  There  were  never  Englishmen  left  in 
a  foreign  country  in  such  misery  as  we 
were  in  this  new  discovered  Virginia.  We 
watched  every  three  nights,  lying  on  the 
bare  cold  ground,  what  weather  soever 
came;  and  waded  all  the  next  day;  which 
brought  our  men  to  be  most  feeble 
wretches.  Our  food  was  but  a  small  can 
of  barley  sodden  in  water,  to  five  men  a 
day.  Our  drink,  cold  water  taken  out  of 
the  river;  which  was  at  a  flood  very  salt; 
at  a  low  tide  full  of  slime  and  filth ;  which 
was  the  destruction  of  many  of  our  men. 
Thus  we  lived  for  the  space  of  five  months 
(Aug.  1607— Jan.  '08)  in  this  miserable 
distress,  not  having  five  able  men  to  man 
our  bulwarks  upon  any  occasion.  If  it  had 


JAMESTOWN  221 

not  pleased  God  to  put  a  terror  in  the 
savages'  hearts,  we  had  all  perished  by 
those  wild  and  cruel  Pagans,  being  in  that 
weak  estate  as  we  were ;  our  men  night  and 
day  groaning  in  every  corner  of  the  fort 
most  pitiful  to  hear.  If  there  were  any 
conscience  in  men,  it  should  make  their 
hearts  to  bleed  to  hear  the  pitiful  murmur- 
ings  and  outcries  of  our  sick  men  without 
relief,  every  night  and  day  for  the  space 
of  six  weeks;  some  departing  out  of  the 
world;  many  times  three  or  four  in  a 
night;  in  the  morning  their  bodies  being 
trailed  out  of  their  cabins  like  dogs  to  be 
buried." 

All  this  distress  was  aggravated  by  the 
ignorance  of  the  settlers  themselves.  The 
English  nation  was  in  the  painful  process 
of  learning  the  difficult  art  of  colonization ; 
a  lesson  whose  pages  are  written  by  the 
hard  hand  of  experience.  They  did  not 
know  what  sort  of  place  it  was  to  which  the 
colony  was  bound.  There  was  a  common 
notion  that  it  was  a  place  of  great  wealth. 


222          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

A  popular  play,  acted  in  1605,  had  charmed 
the  ears  and  dazzled  the  eyes  of  the  adven- 
turous with  descriptions  of  its  golden 
shores. 

' '  I  tell  thee,  gold  is  more  plentiful  there 
than  copper  is  with  us.  .  .  Why,  man,  all 
their  dripping  pans  are  pure  gold ;  and  all 
the  chains  with  which  they  chain  up  their 
streets  are  massy  gold;  all  the  prisoners 
they  take  are  fettered  in  gold ;  and  for  ru- 
bies and  diamonds  they  go  forth  on  holi- 
days and  gather  'em  by  the  seashore  to 
hang  on  their  children's  coats,  and  stick 
in  their  children's  caps,  as  commonly  as 
our  children  wear  saffron-gilt  brooches 
and  groats  with  holes  in  'em." 

This  had  attracted  into  the  expedition 
to  Jamestown  a  number  of  unstable  and 
adventurous  spirits.  There  was  a  lack  of 
practical  persons,  who  know  what  to  do 
with  their  hands.  The  "  gentlemen  "  out- 
numbered the  farmers  and  the  carpenters. 
The  first  settlers  were  mostly  city  men, 
from  London ;  who  had  no  idea  of  even  the 


JAMESTOWN  228 

elementary  principles  of  getting  a  living 
in  the  woods.  They  could  neither  hunt  nor 
fish.  The  result  was  that  they  starved. 
Supplies  of  colonists  came  again  and  again, 
but  they  added  new  mouths  rather  than 
new  hands.  Industrial  conditions  in  Eng- 
land contributed  another  element  to  the 
colonial  situation  in  Virginia.  The  land 
had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  social 
changes  consequent  upon  the  dissolution  of 
the  monasteries.  When  agriculture  began 
to  give  place  to  sheep-raising,  this  turned 
great  numbers  of  small  farms  into  wide 
ranges  of  pasture  land,  and  left  farm  labor- 
ers without  employment.  Moreover,  the 
unprecedented  increase  in  the  amount  of 
available  gold  from  the  mines  of  Peru  had 
caused  a  calamitous  rise  in  prices,  thus 
magnifying  the  cost  of  living.  The  idle 
people,  victims  of  these  various  changes, 
offered  a  tremendous  economic  problem 
for  which  the  colonies  seemed  to  offer  some 
solution.  For  the  good  of  England,  num- 
bers of  these  people  were  transported  to 


224,          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

these  shores.    The  good  of  America  was 
not  especially  considered. 

When  Smith,  injured  by  an  explosion  of 
powder,  left  for  England  in  October,  1609, 
there  were  five  hundred  persons  in  the  com- 
munity. In  May,  1610,  when  Gates  arrived, 
only  sixty  of  them  still  lived.  Some  had 
been  killed  by  the  Indians,  some  had  died 
of  the  cold  in  the  fierce  winter;  some  had 
starved  to  death.  The  cabins,  as  their  oc- 
cupants perished,  were  burned  for  fuel; 
nobody  daring  to  venture  into  the  woods 
for  fear  of  the  savages.  Jamestown  had 
become  a  cemetery  rather  than  a  settle- 
ment. When  Gates  came  with  new  colo- 
nists— themselves  the  survivors  of  a  ship- 
wreck— and  the  forlorn  men  met  in  the 
church  to  consider  the  situation,  it  was  de- 
termined to  abandon  the  place.  And  they 
did  abandon  it.  They  were  in  their  boats 
on  the  river,  making  their  way  to  the  sea, 
when  suddenly  the  ships  of  Lord  Delaware 
appeared,  with  new  men,  new  provisions, 
and  new  courage,  and  they  turned  back. 


JAMESTOWN  225 

From  that  time,  the  fortunes  of  the  col- 
ony were  never  in  doubt.  Even  the  general 
massacre  did  not  discourage  the  colonists. 
They  had  planted  the  roots  of  their  settle- 
ment deep  in  the  soil.  They  had  definitely 
established  the  first  permanent  residence 
of  Englishmen  upon  these  shores.  But  at 
what  a  cost !  Between  1607  and  1625,  five 
thousand  persons  landed  at  Jamestown. 
In  1625  only  a  thousand  of  these  remained 
alive.  Such  were  the  tragic  conditions 
under  which  English  civilization  was 
founded  on  this  continent. 

There  was  civilization  here  before  that ; 
the  French  were  in  Canada  and  the  Span- 
iards were  in  Florida,  but  this  was  Latin 
civilization.  It  differed  from  English  in 
its  theory  as  to  the  right  residence  of 
power.  According  to  the  Latin  idea,  power 
should  be  centralized;  it  resides  properly 
in  the  hand  of  one  man.  According  to  the 
English  idea,  power  should  be  distributed ; 
it  resides  properly  in  the  hands  of  many 
men.  These  theories  lead  in  very  differ- 


226          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

ent  directions;  the  Latin  theory  toward 
a  monarchy  in  politics  and  a  papacy  in 
religion;  the  English  theory  towards  de- 
mocracy and  Protestantism.  Upon  the 
success  or  failure  of  the  particular  ex- 
periment depended  the  whole  constitution 
of  American  life.  The  men  who  died  be- 
side the  James  River  in  the  maintenance 
of  that  colony,  died  that  English  civ- 
ilization, with  all  that  thereunto  pertains, 
might  live.  They  were  the  pioneers,  the 
heroes,  the  martyrs,  of  all  our  liberties. 

When  Lord  Delaware  came,  and  the  col- 
ony was  raised  from  death  to  life,  it  was  in 
the  church  that  the  men  said  their  thanks- 
givings and  their  prayers.  And  the  new 
life  thus  begun  was  lived  in  the  sight  of 
the  church  tower  and  in  the  sound  of  the 
church  bell.  Lord  Delaware  adorned  the 
church  with  chancel  furniture  of  walnut 
and  pews  of  cedar.  Every  morning  at  ten 
and  every  afternoon  at  four  the  settlers 
were  called  to  service.  The  place  was 
sweet  with  flowers,  and  gay  with  the  red 


JAMESTOWN  227 

cloaks  of  Delaware's  fifty  halberdiers. 
There  Pocahontas  was  married,  with  many 
Indians  attending.  There  they  had  two 
sermons  every  Sunday,  and,  in  pleasant 
anticipation  of  a  good  Boston  custom, 
a  lecture  every  Thursday.  There  the  Eev. 
Richard  Buck,  who  had  been  wrecked  with 
Gates  on  the  Bermudas,  in  the  midst  of 
adventures  of  which  Shakespeare  made 
use  in  "  The  Tempest, "  was  the  pastor  of 
the  parish.  For  that  is  what  the  colony 
was,  an  English  parish,  established  on 
these  shores,  gathered  about  the  parish 
church. 

In  this  parish  church  were  enacted  two 
significant  scenes  which  represent  still  fur- 
ther the  likeness  between  the  men  of 
Jamestown  and  the  men  of  Plymouth.  The 
two  colonies  not  only  shared  in  the  same 
experience  of  tragedy,  and  not  only  showed 
the  same  regard  for  religion,  but  they  were 
animated  by  the  same  enthusiasm  for  civil 
liberty.  In  the  Jamestown  church  was 
held  the  first  American  representative  as- 


228          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

sembly;   and  within  the  same  walls  oc- 
curred the  first  American  revolution. 

In  1619,  the  year  before  the  landing  of 
the  Pilgrims,  the  first  American  represen- 
tative assembly  was  convened  at  James- 
town. There  had  been  some  mismanage- 
ment in  the  colony,  and  laying  down  of  laws 
obnoxious  to  the  people,  and  the  settlers 
asked  that  they  might  rule  themselves.  The 
request  came  to  Sir  Edwin  Sandys,  the 
leading  spirit  of  the  Virginia  company,  who 
was  at  that  moment  assisting  our  fathers 
at  Leyden  to  arrange  their  emigration  to 
Plymouth.  He  was  of  the  party  of  the 
Parliament  as  opposed  to  the  party  of  the 
King,  and  the  request  was  congenial  with 
all  his  principles.  Thus  the  company 
granted  it,  and  the  governor  appointed  by 
the  company  summoned  the  assembly. 
Each  settlement  in  the  colony  sent  repre- 
sentatives to  meet  the  governor  and  the 
appointed  council.  The  governor  and 
council  sat  in  the  chancel,  the  burgesses  sat 
in  the  body  of  the  church.  The  Rev.  Eich- 


JAMESTOWN  229 

ard  Buck  opened  the  first  session  with  a 
prayer  that  it  would  please  God  to  guide 
and  sanctify  all  the  proceedings  to  His 
own  glory  and  the  good  of  the  plantation. 
There  in  the  name  of  God  and  in  the  church 
of  God,  our  free  government  had  its  begin- 
ning. The  first  American  Congress  con- 
tinued to  hold  its  meetings  in  the  James- 
town church  for  twenty  years. 

The  laws  which  were  enacted  by  the 
House  of  Burgesses  touched  the  same  notes 
which  were  soon  to  be  sounded  in  New  Eng- 
land. They  regulated  the  conduct  of  the 
people :  they  provided  penalties  for  drunk- 
enness, for  excess  in  apparel,  for  slander, 
for  profane  swearing.  They  enacted  ' '  for 
the  better  observation  of  the  Sabbath  " 
that  no  person  ' '  shall  take  a  voyage  upon 
the  same,  except  it  be  to  church  or  for  other 
cases  of  extreme  necessity."  They  re- 
quired that  every  master  of  a  family  when 
he  came  to  church  should  bring  with  him 
a  serviceable  gun,  and  they  passed  without 
a  dissenting  voice  this  declaration :  '  *  That 


230          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

the  governor  shall  not  lay  any  taxes  or  im- 
positions upon  the  colony,  otherwise  than 
by  the  authority  of  the  general  assembly, 
to  be  levied  and  employed  as  the  said  as- 
sembly shall  appoint." 

In  1635,  the  year  before  the  founding 
of  Harvard  College,  this  assembly  rose  up 
against  the  governor,  and  sent  him  back  a 
prisoner  to  England,  to  his  royal  master. 
Governor  Harvey  had  made  himself  vari- 
ously objectionable.  He  had  been  found 
arrogant  and  avaricious,  not  to  say  dis- 
honest. He  had  proclaimed  laws  on  his 
own  authority.  He  had  sided  with  Mary- 
land in  a  dispute  between  the  colonies.  He 
had  finally  removed  the  secretary  of  state, 
whom  everybody  liked,  and  had  appointed 
another  of  whom  everybody  disapproved. 
The  people  held  a  massmeeting,  to  voice 
their  indignation,  and  the  next  day  the  gov- 
ernor had  the  speakers  arrested.  He  de- 
manded that  the  council  should  send  them 
to  the  gallows.  But  the  patience  of  the 
burgesses  was  now  exhausted.  They  vio- 


JAMESTOWN  231 

lently  laid  hands  on  the  governor,  and 
thrust  him  out  of  his  government,  and  sent 
him  back  to  answer  to  King  Charles.  It 
was  the  first  American  revolution,  the  first 
dramatic  negative  pronounced  by  English- 
men in  America  against  the  oppression  of 
a  representative  of  the  crown.  It  was  the 
splendid  spirit  of  the  Puritans  of  Massa- 
chusetts in  the  souls  of  the  churchmen  of 
Virginia. 

The  brick  church,  whose  tower  remains, 
was  built  in  1639.  As  the  century  ap- 
proached its  end,  this  church  was  the  scene 
of  the  establishing  of  the  second  college  in 
this  country,  the  College  of  William  and 
Mary.  The  massacre  of  1622  had  post- 
poned until  this  time  the  founding  of  this 
school  of  higher  learning. 

"  It  is  a  just  and  wholesome  pride,"  says 
Mr.  Fiske,  * '  that  New  England  people  feel 
in  recalling  the  circumstances  under  which 
Harvard  College  was  founded,  in  a  little 
colony  but  six  years  of  age,  still  struggling 
against  the  perils  of  the  wilderness  and  the 


232          THE  FOREFATHERS  OF 

enmity  of  its  sovereign.  But  it  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  aims  equally  lofty  and 
foresight  equally  intelligent  were  shown 
by  the  men  who  from  1614  to  1624  con- 
trolled the  affairs  of  Virginia."  At  the 
moment  of  the  general  massacre,  while 
Cambridge  on  the  Charles  was  still  a  part 
of  the  unbroken  wilderness,  these  men  were 
ready  to  begin  a  college. 

They  proposed  to  establish  a  university 
for  English  and  Indian  youths.  The  Lon- 
don Company  endowed  it  with  ten  thou- 
sand acres  of  land;  the  Archbishops  con- 
tributed fifteen  hundred  pounds;  the 
Bishop  of  London  added  another  thousand. 
An  anonymous  contributor,  who  signed 
himself  "  Dust  and  Ashes,"  promised  a 
thousand  more.  Another  benefactor  was 
Nicholas  Ferrar,  of  Little  Gidding,  the 
friend  of  George  Herbert  and  Izaak  Wal- 
ton. One  donor  gave  his  library,  another 
provided  Bibles  and  Prayer-books,  another 
presented  the  Communion  plate.  Mr. 
George  Thorp  came  over  to  be  the  rector 


JAMESTOWN  233 

of  the  college.  He  had  hardly  arrived 
when  the  savages  fell  upon  the  settlements 
and  he  was  killed.  Then  for  a  good  while 
the  energies  of  the  colony  were  all  needed 
for  preservation  and  recuperation. 

The  new  college  was  planted  not  at 
Jamestown,  but  at  Williamsburg.  Pres- 
ently, when  the  old  town  was  burned,  the 
people  moved  away  from  the  malarious 
swamps  and  built  their  houses  in  the  new 
place.  Jamestown  fell  into  ruins.  Only 
the  tower  of  the  church  remained  to  mark 
the  spot  where  our  American  institutions 
began.  No  symbol  could  be  more  signifi- 
cant. It  means  that  the  foundation  of  the 
Eepublic  was  laid,  in  the  midst  of  martyr- 
dom, upon  the  solid  basis  of  religion. 


THE  END 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


000713823     3 


